thank you all for the lovely and kind comments from last chapter I had a lovely time in Spain (went to Barcelona!) and since then I have been trying to write this chapter that is... upsetting, to say the least

CONTENT WARNING: Psychiatric levels of distress (I'm not joking. This is not a drill). Some physical force and violence. Unintentional self-injury (non-graphic).

If you need to, please take some extra time today to look after yourself and keep yourself safe. Any questions/concerns, feel free to leave a comment or DM me.

We left off at the start of the reveal of Anya's seventh and final secret. And now we cross into the second devastation...

I know you have all been waiting for this one. You did well to be so patient, and that's all I ever ask for. Thank you x

.

.

.

.

"How long…"

She had seen Damian scared so many times. When he was being held for ransom by amateur criminals. When he found her in the lab and carried her out in his arms. When he visited her at the hospital, wondering if their friendship could survive Anya's secret. When he held her hands and comforted her while she confronted her fear of needles. When she kissed him for the first time, and he was on the edge of breaking from the fear of her rejection.

When he found out her parent's true identities, and he feared what that would mean for his and Anya's relationship. When she fell and lost consciousness at the Winter Warrior tournament, bleeding from her nose and ears.

When Damian faced his father at the Imperial Ball, alone, trapped, and blind with panic.

And yet nothing compared to the look on Damian's face at that moment in time.

"How long has your father been asking you to get closer to me?"

She didn't contradict him quick enough, and her strangled silence and stricken expression was all the answer he needed.

Anya had never been a good liar. It was written all over her face.

Damian stopped breathing as

his entire world

shattered

around him.

The air around him cracked into pieces, fragmenting like shards of ice, and the frigid air burned his lungs.

Dr Forger's private office. The countless photos and articles piled high on the desk and plastered over the walls.

A voice in his memory: I've been investigating him for over a decade.

"You always knew."

You got what you wanted though, right? You got my father arrested. Your investigation is over.

Words fell like rain in Damian's mind, assimilating in a flood of something that made horrible, terrible sense. Scenario after scenario, memory after memory, all of the pieces that he had unknowingly held inside him slotted into place one after the other, and the truth of it made Damian stop breathing.

"You knew your father was investigating mine. That's why you always tried to get closer to me."

An image bloomed in his mind, of a pink-haired girl whose eyes burned with single-minded purpose.

Sy-on boy! Can I come to your house?

Anya reeled back, as though she had just been slapped, and Damian realised with dread that she would have seen that image in his mind, because of course she was reading his mind the whole time. She saw his thoughts unfolding, because she was always in his head…

"I'm so sorry," Anya rasped, and the edge of her waterline blurred faster than he had ever seen it before. "I wanted to tell you, I just, I didn't know how, I couldn't find the right time-"

He couldn't cope with this.

"I have to go."

Low and calm, Damian couldn't help but think that his voice sounded like something separate from him. Like it was spoken by somebody else.

Damian shoved his things back into his bag, not even caring that half of his papers had drifted and fallen to the floor, and the other half had no doubt been crumpled and torn by the force of his shove. He just had to move, he had to get out, he had to get out now-

"Damian, wait-"

He couldn't leave the library fast enough, and even worse, he could barely look at her. Damian knew more than anyone how Anya's tears could unravel him, and he was already on the last thread of his own sanity.

With no crowd in the corridor to hide him, it did not take long at all for Anya to catch up to him. Her footsteps behind his were urgent, and hesitant at the time. Her own fear rolled off her in waves, but Damian couldn't let himself get caught in it. He kept walking, wanting to get away from her because he knew that if he looked at her huge, watery eyes, if he saw her cry, he wouldn't be able to hold himself together.

Words and memories swam in his mind and Damian knew, he knew that she could see it all, and he felt sick to his stomach.

How long had she lived in his head? How long had she been watching his memories? Pulling at his thoughts? Taking notes of his fears and hopes and dreams?

She invaded his mind every day… and then what? Did she pass the information on, somehow? How much of Damian's private thoughts stayed private?

And of course, Damian wasn't the only target of her powers. She had been using them on everyone from the start. Even from the very beginning…

"You pretended to be older so that he would adopt you," Damian said quietly. Again, his voice didn't sound like it belonged to him. "You knew what he was looking for."

Because he was a spy and she knew everything from the fucking start -

"It was so I could attend Eden," Anya admitted, quicker than Damian predicted. Her voice wobbled as she spoke, painfully quiet in the otherwise empty corridor.

If only Damian had never opened the door to Dr Forger's office. If only he never saw the information within. If only he never figured anything out, then he wouldn't have to feel… this. The horrible tightness in his chest. The terrible weight of dread in his stomach. If only he wasn't a Desmond.

"My father was his target. So you targeted me."

"I only wanted to help," she choked out. "I really did want to be friends with you! I never meant for… for all this to happen…"

Damian closed his eyes. Yes, he knew. Of course he knew - because hadn't she shared her memories with him? Hadn't he seen her cry so many times, drowning in her own grief and crushed by the weight of her secrets?

Am I supposed to keep lying to him about his father? I can't do that to him! I can't keep doing this!

Will your… father… be there?

Flashes of conversations he had long forgotten trickled into his mind, mingling drop-by-drop into the growing lake of words that threatened to drown him.

I'm not a normal person, Damian… Could you accept that my family isn't normal? That I'm not normal?

I'm not normal, either. I'm a Desmond.

He thought that she didn't care about his name, that she saw him for him, and nothing else. For a girl who was so inept at lying, she had done a brilliant job of making a fool out of him. He deserved this, for being so naive, for believing all of her lies. How could he ever have thought otherwise?

The empty space where his heart had been gnawed at him. Vicious cracks splintered along the edge of the hollow space, quickly fracturing through to his soul, millimetres from piercing him completely.

A small voice reached him through the growing storm, splintering even more fragments of his heart.

"Damian?"

He couldn't bring himself to turn around. There was no way he could survive looking at her.

"Please can we talk, I swear, I can explain-"

A flurry of snow swirled in his vision. White flakes built higher and higher in his mind, freezing his heart, the only way to stop it from shattering entirely.

Something pulled on his cloak, and Damian couldn't help but picture so clearly how she had grasped the fabric of it between her thumb and forefinger. A movement so tiny, and gentle, and yet so familiar. A movement that made the world stop spinning, only for them.

"Damian, please-"

Her voice cracked, and his heart cracked deeper.

Damian half-turned to face her, and the ice around him grew, cutting him off from the rest of the world.

The slap echoed in the corridor.

Anya's palm smarted, right where he had smacked her hand away.

"Don't touch me."

Damian levelled her with a glare, his eyes black as frostbite, and just as lethal. Just by the look in his eyes, Anya felt as though a thin layer of frost crept across her skin, raising goosebumps along every millimetre.

Even his voice frightened her. Low and quiet, it wasn't what she would have expected from him at all, and it terrified her. He was too controlled. Too restrained.

Too cold.

Anya never imagined that Damian could look at her like that, and it shook the very earth beneath her feet. It paralysed her to her core, that she couldn't raise her voice to more than a whisper. Her throat hurt. Her chest hurt. The back of her eyes stung with the effort of holding back her tears.

How did it come to this? How did it all go so wrong, so fast?

She tried to speak, but nothing came out, and the harder she tried, the more impossible it felt. Her voice vanished into thin air, disappearing like smoke. So, naturally, she turned to the part of her that had been with her for as long as she remembered.

I never meant to hurt you!

Damian reeled backwards, his eyes filled with unmistakable pain and betrayal, and instantly Anya knew that she had made a terrible mistake.

"Did you seriously just-"

The pain in his eyes overwhelmed him, that even Damian was lost for words, and in an instant, the shock on his face changed to dark anger.

A low rumble vibrated the air around her, holding her lungs hostage, and a glacial chill froze her to the spot.

Icy anger lanced her skull, slicing across her vision.

GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

Her breath wrenched itself out of her lungs, and Anya swayed on her feet, lightheaded and weak.

Anya had been affected by strong emotions before - but not like this. She never imagined that there could be something worse for her powers than crowds. Worse than the minds of psychopaths and murderers.

Pain. Anger. Betrayal. Despair. And agonising heartbreak, although she couldn't tell who it came from.

Silent tears streamed down her face as she collapsed, and the last she saw of him was the tail end of his cloak as he left her.

Beyond the ice wall around Damian's heart, snow swirled around him at an alarming speed, a frenzy of ice shards that cut into his skin, stinging his face and making every step away from her even more painful.

Not because it was her, and walking away meant that he had committed a sin so grave he didn't know how it could ever be forgiven, but because it felt so… unnatural. His body tried to fight him every step of the way, but Damian's heart couldn't take another second, and even his mind swivelled between what he thought he understood and what he actually understood and was it even the same thing and if only there was some way for him to just make it all make sense -

Everyone wants something from us. No. Exceptions.

Damian's breath caught in his chest, choking him from the inside.

Everyone wants something from you. Even…

…that little girlfriend of yours.

Humiliation stung his eyes. His father was right all along. He had warned Damian this would happen, and he didn't listen, because he was a naive, stupid, stupid boy, who really thought… he really thought…

He really thought she was different.

But his father's suspicions were right, even if he wasn't right about why Anya was trying to get closer to him the whole time. Donovan knew. He knew that Anya was a telepath from the project that he had funded and overseen - and what were the chances that she would end up in Damian's class?

Are you still blinded by your infatuation with her?

Damian's breath came hard and fast as another realisation dawned on him.

That bastard. He had mentioned Anya on purpose. Damian had caught his father off-guard when he tried to get information from him - and then Donovan used Anya to distract Damian, simultaneously using her as a shield to hide behind while making his attack.

And Damian completely fell for it, because he was blind. Because Anya blinded him. A fact so obvious, even his own father could see it, and he used it to test Damian even further - a test which Damian undeniably failed.

Damian's throat burned. Trying to suck air back into his lungs was excruciating, especially because all he wanted to do was scream and scream and scream but he held himself back, just barely aware that he was in the middle of a school corridor, as opposed to in the safety of his own room. He hung on the thread of his despair, painfully conscious that the thread was fraying fast and he was going to snap fully at any moment.

He needed to go… somewhere. Private. Now. He needed…

Damian stumbled in a direction that he vaguely hoped was his room. His brain had slowed, numb to the cold that gripped him, and created a frosted pane between him and everything else, to the extent that he could barely see his surroundings. It had all blurred into shapes and shades of grey and black, and Damian dragged his feet one after the other until the wooden floorboards beneath him gave way to plush carpet, and then finally, the threshold of somewhere that he could recognise in his sleep.

As he walked, the bitter resentment and humiliation sank into his bones. How could he have been so blind? How could he have ignored the signs for so long?

Arctic air froze him over by centimetres, and Damian wrapped his arms around himself, his fingertips digging into his upper arms in an attempt to keep his brittle chest from shattering apart completely.

It hurt. His chest hurt. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. It hurt to remember, it hurt to see, to feel, to breathe, think, remember, see, feel -

He just wanted

everything

to go away.

Smash!

Damian didn't even know what he had broken, but it wasn't enough. His hands blindly found the next thing, and the next, throwing anything he could find until they shattered on impact, but it wasn't nearly enough. It needed to be heavier. It needed to break beyond repair.

He grabbed the armrest of his desk chair, and with both hands launched it against the closed door, but it didn't break the way he wanted it to. He slammed it again and again, watching the shards of wood break until it was a pile of splinters, and when he was done, he grabbed the desk, and upended it to the other side of the room.

Loose papers filled the air. Textbooks thudded to the floor. But it still wasn't enough.

He tore through pages, punched through his bed until he realised that punching it wasn't enough, and he ripped the cloth of the bedding to shreds, as easily as ripping through paper. Down and feathers saturated the air like a snowstorm, and all he could see was white.

No. Not white. Not that.

All he could see was white -

He changed direction, retreated to somewhere without the white feathers. Plush carpet became cool tile, and Damian somehow managed to stumble over to the sink in the bathroom, gripping onto both sides of the porcelain with all his strength, just to remain standing.

Wide, dark eyes stared at him, and for one brief, horrible second, Damian honestly thought that his father had somehow apparated before him. After taking stock of his reflection, Damian was forced to admit that he almost couldn't recognise the boy that stared back at him. Terrible, dark eyes stood out from pallid skin, his jaw set so hard that he could bite through glass.

This was the face of weakness, Damian realised. All because he believed her. All because he never listened to his father. All because he was so stupid, so naive, so trusting, when he should have known better.

Haunting and humiliating, the face taunted him, and Damian knew that he never wanted to see that face again.

CRACK!

Damian drove his fist into the mirror with his full strength, splintering his reflection into a hundred fragments. Glass shards clattered to the ground, melodic like chimes on the wind. Like the sound of her voice in his head.

CRACK!

Again.

More fragments fell from the mirror. Patches of his reflection disappeared with them, until only the shattered remains of him stared back.

Again.

Cracks formed beyond the mirror's edge, splintering the white bathroom tile beyond it.

Damian paused when he heard it.

A… sound. Something muffled reached him through the storm, though Damian could barely hear it:

Boss? Is everything okay?

"Leave me alone," Damian gritted out, his voice more gravelly than he intended. The effort of speaking took up all his concentration. Ice shards clawed their way into his throat, and he sucked a breath through his teeth from the pain of it.

It sounds really bad. Like back then…

I think we should go inside.

Okay, Boss we're coming in!

The creak of a door, and then the kind of silence that felt wrong. A silence that made his heart beat all too loud in his ears, and goosebumps sprinkle along his skin.

Footsteps behind him. Closer.

Damian?

Through the haze of the storm, it took some time for Damian to realise that they were calling him his name. It already sounded so foreign to him, so meaningless. Why would they bother calling him that? It wasn't like he mattered at all. They should have just left him to carve his pain onto the world. It was what he deserved.

Oh, shit. This is bad. This is really, really bad.

Something pressed against his back, steering him away from the mess of shards he had created.

Come on, we have to go this way…

"Don't touch me."

Was that his voice? He couldn't tell any more.

Almost there - Ewen get the door -

Ewen. He knew that name. Ewen, his friend. Which meant that the hand on his back was probably -

You cannot ever truly trust your friends.

His father's eyes flashed into his mind, dark and foreboding. A warning.

Reflexively, Damian lashed out to the figure behind him, only for searing pain to shoot from his knuckles all the way to his shoulders, and he cried out.

"Get away from me!"

Hands grabbed his elbow on either side, holding him back, but Damian fought back, slamming the heel of his palm into something firm and pushed with all his might -

CRASH!

Emile!

Arms held him back again, but this time, they were firmer, stronger, and Damian's shoulders strained with the effort of fighting back against them, but they didn't let go.

"Let me go!" Damian shouted, and when they gripped him harder, restraining all movement, Damian's rage bled out of him in a gut-wrenching scream.

Not able to do anything else, he roared until he was hoarse, and all that was left were the stinging tears that wouldn't stop. Ice and snow solidified in his mind, and all he could see was white.

And all he could see was white.

And all he could see was white.

Slam!

Followed by a series of harsh staccato noises, growing in volume and impact.

Something pricked at the back of Emile's memory and he sat up slowly from the sofa. "Did you hear that?"

Ewen nodded, and both made worried eye contact. It was coming from Damian's room.

Both stopped outside of his room, frozen by the sounds that emanated from within. Objects crashed and thumped against the doorframe, and they jolted from the impact of it.

He couldn't help it. A memory played in Emile's mind, one that he honestly thought would never repeat itself, and when he looked at Ewen, he knew instantly that they both remembered the same thing.

CRACK!

The sound of glass splintering and clinking to the ground shocked them both into stillness, and a cold fear crept into Emile's veins, knowing that Ewen felt it, too.

"It sounds really bad," said Emile quietly. "Like back then…"

"I think we should go inside," said Ewen, just as Emile knocked on the door, not even waiting for a response before he turned the doorknob and opened it wide enough for Ewen to follow him inside.

"Okay, Boss, we're coming in!"

Once their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, the scene greeted them like a punch to the stomach.

The first thing they saw were feathers. Eiderdown floated in the air, almost looking like snow, but the wreckage beneath them was anything but serene. Ribbons of torn cloth draped from broken and upended furniture, wooden shards strewn across the floor, even the lamps from the desk and bedside table had been smashed, surrounded by glittering glass shards.

Ewen stepped inside first, careful to sidestep the sharp-edged debris on the floor as he crossed the threshold to the unrecognisable ruin that was Damian's room, and Emile followed suit, the roar of his heartbeat thundering in his ears. His shoe crunched on tiny glass fragments, and he gulped.

What the hell happened?

Ewen knocked at the closed bathroom door, again not waiting for an answer to go inside.

"Damian?" Emile called quietly, but when he saw the shadowed figure in the bathroom, he sucked in a breath through his teeth.

"Oh, shit," Ewen gasped. "This is bad. This is really, really bad."

Neither Ewen nor Emile needed to turn on the light to see that the shadowed figure at the sink was Damian, nor did they particularly want to. Just his silhouette was enough to ignite fear in the pit of their stomachs, frozen still with his fist driven into the mirror, and the wall behind it.

Damian radiated with something dark and cold, and it gripped Emile with a terrible fear, but he gritted his teeth and stepped towards the emanating darkness.

"We need to get him to the infirmary, before he - " Ewen stopped himself mid-sentence, noticing the dark stains that had dripped to the floor.

Shit. Shit shit shit. They were too late.

Emile swallowed in an effort to bring any moisture back into his suddenly dry mouth. It was, quite frankly, a miracle that Damian had stopped punching the wall when they entered, but a countdown had started in Emile's mind, knowing that they were on borrowed time.

"Come on, we have to go this way," said Emile, his voice low and quiet, and he used one hand on Damian's back to try to steer him away. If they could get him to the infirmary, maybe then he would be safe, maybe they could -

"Don't touch me," Damian growled, but Emile ignored him, pressing his lips into a thin line, and he adjusted his approach, slowly moving his hand to hold his wrist, and nudged him into pulling away.

Thank the gods, Damian allowed Emile to pull his hand from the wall, slow and listless, and crumbs of plaster and tile shook themselves free from the movement.

"Almost there - Ewen get the door -"

At his name, Ewen jolted, and followed both Emile and Damian out of the dark bathroom, taking care to click the door shut behind them. All the while, he couldn't get the images out of his head. The memories of the past and the present overlapped, and Ewen's heart thudded at the possibility that something had happened to his friend that he would never be able to understand.

What could possibly have been severe enough to set him off like this?

"What the hell happened this time?" Ewen whispered, too afraid to move closer. He couldn't get the images from before out of his head. "I swear, if it's his father again-"

Without warning, Damian's fist collided with Ewen's shoulder, and he cried out.

"Get away from me!"

Ewen stumbled back from the force of the blow, and instinctively he covered the spot with his own hand. His eyes widened when he peeled his hand away, sticky and wet, piecing together in his mind the reason why Damian's punch felt so sharp-

"Boss, I'm sorry about this!" Emile gritted out as he threw his weight onto Damian, holding him tightly with both arms. "This is for your own good!"

Damian writhed in the hold, and sweat beaded on Emile's forehead as he held him tighter. He never expected that Damian would fight back so violently, but Emile never neglected his rugby training, and he put everything he had into making sure that his best friend wouldn't hurt himself more than he already had.

"Just stop, please! I don't want to hurt you-"

Something snapped in Damian's eyes. He twisted in Emile's grip, and slammed the heel of his palm directly in the centre of Emile's chest, sending him flying into the chest of drawers.

CRASH!

"Emile!"

The wood of the chest shattered on impact, and before he knew it, Emile was embedded between two halves of the fractured furniture.

The sound of the crash was enormous, louder than anything Damian had perpetrated before they had gone in to stop him, and so when the door opened and a large figure barged inside, neither Ewen or Emile were surprised that the sounds of destruction were drawing attention from outside.

"What is going on here?" exclaimed the Matron of Cecile Hall, doing her absolute best to take in the scene despite the darkness, and when her eyes landed on Emile caught in a heap of broken planks and scattered clothes, the state of Damian's injuries, the pained figure of Ewen clutching his own shoulder, her eyes widened, her mind filling in the missing information in seconds.

Ewen only had time to gasp out "He's trying to hurt himself!" before a burst of noise and movement shocked him into silence. For all that Emile and Ewen could see, Damian had been standing one moment, about to launch his fists again, and the next he had been tackled by the Matron, restraining him in a movement that Emile was sure would be illegal on the rugby pitch.

"Let me go!" Damian shouted, thrashing his entire body, and the Matron grunted from the strain of his strength.

Panic and fear flooded Emile, and he knew immediately that Matron was barely holding Damian back. He held back a groan and pushed himself from the rubble, rushing in to help her by sliding his arm under Damian's and holding him in a lock on one side while the Matron restrained the other.

Though he kept his stance, Emile's hands trembled as Damian's screams rattled in his ears. Curdled his blood. And yet, all he could do was try to keep his friend safe.

They held him until his screams turned into sobs, and Emile wanted to look away, guilty and ashamed for not being able to help like a good friend could.

I'm sorry, Boss, he wanted to say, and he set his jaw tight. I'm sorry, I'm sorry…

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to hold back his own tears, wishing he could drown it all out.

.

.

.

.

I'm sorry! I did say it would get worse...

This chapter was so genuinely difficult to write, and so upsetting. I actually feel shaken. so I am going to look after myself by going out into the sunshine and eating soup

Next chapter: Saturday 6th April

On a lighter note (since we need it) DID YOU GUYS READ CHAPTER 96?!

WHAT. THE FUCK.

I SCREAMED out loud and startled everyone around me! Endo, you genius, you fed us Damianya fans so well