Happy Birthday to Gannah Ehab - I hope you have a lovely day, and thank you so much for that extra burst of motivation xxx

And special shoutout to YourLocalAsexualLoser - getting to watch your reading journey was incredible, and by the time you get to this chapter you'll be caught up! Good luck, sorry, thank you for reading, uhhhhhh and have fun xxx

Finally, thank you to everyone for your patience, and to those who checked in and sent well wishes (that was really sweet of you 💖). Just for reassurance: I am emotionally and physically well, but I have been supremely busy so I just haven't been able to get round to writing like I usually would!

I made a post on my Twitter to say it would be late, unfortunately it's the only place I can really provide live updates unless people ask by DM'ing me directly on Twitter, Discord, tumblr or here - which anyone is always welcome to do!

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A hand stroked his face, and Damian's eyelids fluttered open to see beautiful emerald eyes. Smiling softly at him. Warm, golden light enveloped them both.

I love waking up to you.

Me too. His arm circled her waist and pulled her closer, nuzzling into her neck. Pink and green danced behind his eyes like watercolours, wrapping him so completely in a sense of safety and love.

He wanted to stay there forever.

And he would have. Until -

Snow and ice flurried around him, slowly encasing him, crawling up his body and hardening on his skin.

White burned behind his eyes, freezing him to the spot.

Broken reflections, broken glass, falling to the floor like rain. Screaming that lasted for days.

Then, an abyss. Falling and falling and falling, lost to the world. He floated in an endless void, nothing to hold on to, nothing to anchor him. Strawberry and mint dissipated from existence, leaving him with nothing. Worse than nothing, because he couldn't escape from the overwhelming sense that there should be something, that he was missing something, something important, but nothing appeared. Only the metallic tang of silence, that smothered the screams, and still he fell.

Falling and falling and falling…

The nightmares were short-lived, cut short by the anaesthesia that dulled the colours and curbed the shapes until they were no longer recognisable as dreams. Just floating lights and flashes of voices that he wouldn't remember.

And then it was darkness, swallowing him up, a numbing blanket that cocooned him from the awful sensations that resided in wakefulness.

It would have been nice to stay asleep forever. The darkness was safe. Nothing hurt there. No-one there to spout lies, no-one to deceive him into thinking that he was loved, when he knew better. In the darkness, Damian could forget.

But as all things come to an end, so too did the protective wrapping of sleep.

It was pain, mostly. Stinging skin, aching muscles, groaning bones, all of it cut through the shadows of his sleep, forcing him out of his state of lovely unconsciousness.

And, light. Why was it always lights? White lights blared from above, relentless and permeating.

Something beeping. Something buzzing. Maybe electricity. Something…

Damian blinked, and he kept blinking until the shapes of his vision coalesced into something a little more detailed. More resembling a full picture. In his periphery, a figure stood by, but it was difficult to turn his head.

"Where-" he rasped, but he was only able to get one word out before he started coughing.

His throat was raw. Like a beast had clawed its way out.

"I would advise that you refrain from speaking, Mr Desmond," said a firm voice. A woman's. "Even whispering might cause more damage to the tissue surrounding your vocal chords."

He vaguely wondered why he should care.

He felt numb, save for the edges of his fingertips and toes which tingled unpleasantly. His body felt too heavy, like it wasn't even his body anymore. He was just a bundle of thoughts attached to a pile of cells and muscles and organs. Maybe if he closed his eyes again, the thoughts could go away. He could fade back into the darkness, fade away…

Maybe he fell asleep again. Maybe he heard voices. IT was hard to tell while he was drifting in and out, never quite able to settle back into the comforting void.

Either way, it wasn't long before the cruel white lights brought him back into the world, and the figure from before had returned to his side.

Was he cold? Damian couldn't tell. He felt no different than the air which filtered through his lungs, like his skin was glass and his organs were only fog. Barely a part of the world at all, only a detached observer.

"Do you remember much of what happened, Mr Desmond? You don't have to say anything, just a thumbs up or a thumb down would be fine."

It could have been the same voice as before, but he wasn't sure.

Damian stared at the ceiling, waiting for the sensations in his body to return to normal, waiting to feel less… gone. Less detached from reality, somehow.

What did he remember? He wasn't sure. Flashes of memories bobbed to the surface of his mind, but nothing felt real enough for him to grab on to. They slipped through his fingers like water.

"Where…" Damian tried again, but the pain in his throat returned, and Damian quickly silenced himself, conscious only of stopping the horrible sensation.

Thankfully, that one word was enough to prompt an answer.

"You're in the Acute Trauma Unit of the Berlint General Hospital. You arrived here in an ambulance with a teacher from your school, as well as two of your friends."

Damian didn't quite look away from the ceiling, but he furrowed his brows in confusion. That didn't sound right. They must have him confused with somebody else. He was about to open his mouth and tell them so, but he didn't try to speak, instead waiting to hear the rest of what they had to say.

There was a deep sigh, and Damian gave his head the barest of inclines to see who had been speaking to him, somewhat unsurprised to see a woman wearing a white lab coat affixed with a name tag which read Dr Greta Hahn . She held a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other, looking at him with some mix of curiosity and concern.

What is it? He wanted to ask, but Damian said nothing, remembering the way his voice could turn to dust after only one word, and a cold dread settled over him.

"Your friends, Mr Elman and Mr Egeburg were discharged from the unit at six o'clock this morning, while you were in surgery."

Damian tensed. Elman. Egeburg. That was definitely right, wasn't it?

Also… Surgery?

"We were able to remove all of the thirty-nine glass shards in surgery, but it should take a couple of weeks for the lacerations to heal fully," said Dr Hahn, before appraising Damian with a serious look, taking a steadying breath. "You should know that some of the pieces were quite close to your radial and ulnar arteries, and if they were severed, you would have lost a lot more blood than you did. You were very lucky that your injuries weren't more severe."

What are you talking about?

That didn't sound right. That didn't sound right at all. Damian had no recollection of this. How could this have happened?

Damian blinked slowly, trying to piece together the facts being presented to him, but it was agonisingly slow. His brain felt foggy, like he was wading through water to get to the next thought, and it was an embarrassingly long time before the doctor's message finally clicked in his mind that he could have died.

But, why…?

Something flashed in his mind: A face in the mirror. Shattering apart.

It was starting to come back to him, little by little, piece by piece, but what he saw was still too much. Far too much.

And yet, it was just enough for him to start to piece things together, and the terrible realisation triggered the flakes of snow that drifted into his vision once again.

The realisation that he really hurt people. That he really hurt his friends.

It was too much to deal with, and Damian felt his body growing cold once more as the knowledge settled into him, cutting him off from his senses, and he shoved what few memories he had regained back into the shadows. He couldn't cope with them. They were just too painful to remember, too painful to bear.

He must have been too successful at cutting himself off from the rest of the world, because then he blinked, and he was somewhere else.

Dark wooden furniture replaced clinical instruments, white lights faded into warm lamps, and the hospital bed had morphed into a straight-backed chair, facing a large desk.

Professor Henderson leaned forward with his hands folded, elbows on his desk, and regarded Damian with a look of interest, and Damian realised with dread that he had apparently been present in a meeting with his teacher and he had no idea how he got there or what was going on.

"Are you with me, Mr Desmond?"

"Uh…" Damian rasped, and then he coughed. His voice apparently hadn't returned yet. How long had it been? Hours? Days?

"Perhaps that's a start," said Professor Henderson, opening a file on the desk in front of him. "Dr Hahn passed on that you are temporarily voiceless, so please do not strain yourself on my behalf. Although if you would give some indications now and then that you are listening, that would be very much appreciated."

Damian nodded, and Professor Henderson cleared his throat to continue.

"Mr Egeburg and Mr Elman were kind enough to meet with the Pastoral Care Team on their return to the school, and provide some further details on the incident."

That was all it was now. An 'incident'. Damian didn't know what to think about that.

"While I will believe their testimony on the circumstances of the incident and their resulting injuries, I'm afraid there is still the matter of destruction of school property-"

Damian snapped his head up. Injuries? What injuries? What is he talking about?

Professor Henderson noted the confusion of his face. "You recall that you had destroyed your room?"

Damian stared blankly at Professor Henderson, trying to remember anything at all, before he recalled that Henderson was actually expecting an answer from him, so he shook his head.

It was so frustrating trying to give voice to his thoughts while he couldnt fucking talk.

"In…juries…?"

At the sound of his voice, Damian's hand flew to his throat, somewhat shocked by the thought that the horrible gravelly sound was coming from him. It wasn't just his voice, either. Or his arm. His entire body ached, like he had been slammed into the side of a mountain and crushed under its mighty weight, and now he was only a breeze away from turning into dust.

It could have been the effects of the 'incident' that Henderson mentioned. Or it could have been the incredible guilt that crushed him, like he was caught under the pressure of the deep ocean, crushed on all sides.

Something in Professor Henderson's expression hardened, before he quickly smoothed it over, so fast that Damian almost missed it.

"You really don't remember?"

A chill went down Damian's spine. Even after the Desmond scandal, when everything hit the newspapers, Henderson had never treated Damian any differently. If anything, he had been even more supportive, making time to specifically ask Damian how he was faring and offering tea in his private office - not that Damian ever took it, even though he sometimes wished he had.

In many ways, Professor Henderson was Damian's last line of defence, and beyond it, was the swirling effects of everything that had turned his life upside-down. Suspicion. Guarded looks. Questions he wasn't prepared to answer.

Damian should have known that it was only a matter of time before he would receive those looks from his teacher, too. The monocle did nothing to hide Henderson's suspicion of Damian, and if anything, only magnified it, and though the questions went unvoiced they were still there.

He looked down into his lap, where he had been fidgeting with his hands, while sweat pricked shamefully at the back of his neck. What did he do?

"Very well," sighed Professor Henderson, prompting Damian to sit straighter in his seat, whilst at the same time feeling far too scared of what Henderson had to say.

"It is my understanding that you were involved in an… incident, which resulted in the injury of yourself, and your two friends, Mr Elman and Mr Egeburg."

Damian nodded, but he still felt confused. Professor Henderson seemed very much intent on using words to dance around the issue, instead of actually telling Damian what happened.

"Dr Hahn has recommended that you should continue to rest your voice, and that you refrain from taking part in any sports or physical activity for the next week, at the risk of reopening some of the wounds on your arm."

It was only then that Damian noticed the slight tingling in his right arm - the dominant one - and he looked down to see that the entirety of his hand was wrapped in bandages. Curious, Damian rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and sweater even more, to see that the bandages extended all the way up his forearm. He flexed his fingers experimentally, noting that the tingling in his arm hadn't gone away.

And another fact: he was out of uniform. Damian didn't even register that he was sitting in front of Professor Henderson in his own clothes. Did he even remember getting dressed? Where was he that morning?

He was clean, which meant that he must have come back from the hospital at some point, and at least had time to have a shower and change his clothes - but when? Yesterday? Days ago? This morning?

It slowly started to dawn on Damian then that something was not just wrong - it was very, very wrong.

The strange looks from Henderson. The gaps in his memory. All this talk of… injuries…

"What… now…?"

Professor Henderson closed his eyes, and Damian found himself struck by just how tired his teacher looked.

Was that his fault, too…?

"What now, indeed?"

Damian jolted as Henderson cleared his throat, and he sat deathly still as he watched his teacher affix his monocle, before lifting a piece of paper from his desk, holding it closely to read the contents.

"Under normal circumstances, you would be reviewed through a Disciplinary Hearing, however I have personally volunteered to oversee your case, given that I am responsible for your care here. I hope that is agreeable to you?"

Damian didn't really have much choice but to nod, and Henderson continued.

"In summary: you caused significant destruction to school property, the extent of which is still being assessed, and in the process you had also caused two students to be hospitalised, as well as yourself. As a result, Mr Elman is excused from the upcoming rugby tournament, and your participation in any football matches will be reviewed."

Damian swallowed dryly, the guilt hardening into a lump in his throat.

Ah, shit.

Emile loved rugby. And if he couldn't participate because of Damian…

The guilt pressed harder on him, and shame pricked at the corners of his eyes.

Damian had so many questions, too. Where were Ewen and Emile? Why hadn't he seen them? And how long had it been since they were all in hospital? And all this talk still didn't really answer the question in Damian's mind about what exactly happened during the 'incident', but the more that Professor Henderson spoke, the less that Damian wanted to know.

And.

He hadn't forgotten: there was still the question of "what happens now".

He could be expelled. Probably. Three Tonitrus Bolts were applied to each incidence of physical assault, and he had two on his list. That was six Tonitrus Bolts at minimum, not including the Bolt for damage of school property - although, if it the damage was as severe as Damian feared, maybe two Bolts wouldn't even cover it, in which he case he would almost certainly be expelled without ever seeing his friends again, or getting to defend himself from being put on Expulsion Order.

"The school was inclined to see the incident as a physical altercation, until your matron was able to provide us with a statement, which was corroborated by your friends."

Being unable to speak was starting to become really frustrating.

Damian bit the inside of his cheek and looked away.

"To make my final decision, I decided to review your school year," Professor Henderson said quietly, and to Damian's surprise, he brought out a thick file, the front of which was printed with Damian's own name.

His school file?

He could have scoffed. As if his grades had any effect on the situation…

"Let's see," he mumbled through his moustache, his finger scanning the pages along with his eyes, until he found what he was looking for. "Ah, yes. In September of this academic year, you did not turn up to classes, and it emerged that you had been kidnapped in the morning, although you returned safely to school by the afternoon."

Damian's head shot up. That happened this year?

(And why was that in his file?)

It felt… so long ago…

"It is my understanding that you were held for ransom and assaulted, although the situation was quickly rectified and smoothed over with the assistance of the local authorities, and it did not seem to affect you in the weeks or months that followed."

Damian held himself back from rolling his eyes, because while yes that was over fairly quickly, then there was everything else to deal with -

There was always something else. One thing after the other. Which Professor Henderson seemed intent on mentioning:

"Not long after this, you then experienced the disappearance of one of your close friends, which I understand did cause you and your friends a significant amount of stress."

It wasn't just a disappearance, Damian wanted to say, biting the words back. She was abducted. Taken back by a lab which specialised in human experimentation, and he went into hell to get her back.

"A couple of months later, you experienced seeing your father arrested on live television, and at the same time, you were put in charge of a business conglomerate."

Damian pressed his lips into a tight line, completely unsure how to react, because yes that was an unexpected turn of events, but he had been through worse, hadn't he? Why was that even on the list? (And did Henderson have to put it so bluntly?)

"Finally, I am told that you have arranged a press conference to take place in approximately two week's time, which I imagine must be causing some anxiety."

Oh. Damian paled. He forgot about that.

Professor Henderson looked up from the file, meeting Damian's gaze.

"Do you understand why I am telling you all this, Mr Desmond?"

That was exactly what Damian wanted to know. It honestly felt as though his teacher was just telling him stuff that he already knew, for no real reason or purpose, but having all the events of the year laid out in front of him like that felt…

Well. It felt crazy. There was no other word for it. There was no way that all of that had only happened within the past… Uh…

Damian counted it in his head. Seven months.

You are fucking joking, he wanted to scowl, but as with everything else, he held himself back. How could it only have been seven months?

Professor Henderson watched the emotions flashing across Damian's face with slight amusement, but at the sound of him clearing his throat, he brought Damian's attention back.

"The point is, that is an… unusual amount of stress to experience within a short timespan. In fact, I would not be surprised if the recent incident was as a result of the combination of everything that has come before. Anyone would find themselves crumbling under the face of it all."

Damian's fists clenched in his lap, defiant and, yes, perhaps a touch defensive, because he was not crumbling. He was absolutely fine. It was insulting to consider that he, Damian Desmond, could be affected by something as simple and stupid-sounding as stress.

While what Professor Henderson had described was true, it wasn't the whole picture, not by a long shot. Noone could ever know how deeply it ran, how entangled he had become in something so much larger than himself, how his father had overseen the torture and experimentation of so many children, including Anya -

Damian's mind snagged on her name.

Anya.

He didn't even realise that he had been trying not to think about her. Been trying not to even think her name, because her name carried a pain that struck too deep to ignore.

Professor Henderson had no idea that Anya was the true trigger for Damian's stress. Yes, everything might have been adding up slowly, might have been snowballing together, but in the end, her betrayal was the last straw. The final secret that brought him to his limits.

Damian didn't like to remember what happened after the last time he spoke to her, after he pieced together the shards of truth that had been pricking at him for so long. He remembered being… cold. Blankets of snow wrapping around him tightly, stopping him from feeling anything at all. He remembered pain - somewhere, maybe everywhere. People shouting at him. Grabbing him, holding him.

And… a sound. Screaming.

Pain sliced through Damian's mind and he leaned forward, resting his forehead on the palm of one hand, as he groaned.

"Mr Desmond-"

Professor Henderson's alarmed voice reached him, but not much else, and Damian gritted his teeth against the tidal wave of suffering that threatened to drown him from the inside.

Why? Why? He wanted to cry. He didn't want to feel like this. He wanted it to go away, he wanted to never feel anything ever again. It would be easier that way. He wouldn't have to worry so much, he wouldn't have to feel so helpless, so out of control, so betrayed, he wouldn't have to feel like this -

A hand clapped Damian on the shoulder, and he jolted.

"I apologise," said Professor Henderson. "Perhaps I pushed this conversation too far, despite knowing that you were under great stress."

Huh? Damian blinked, and slowly lifted his head from his hands. Beads of sweat crawled their way down his shirt. He hadn't even noticed that his teacher had left his chair, and had come all the way around the imposing desk to make contact with him and see if he was okay.

(He wasn't.)

Not for the first time, Damian wondered just what the fuck was happening to him.

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I missed writing Damian. And, I won't lie, writing Dissociated Damian was HARD 😭 For me to write emotions I have to really connect with them and feel them in my body, which made writing dissociation really tough, since a lot of it is about mind/body shutdown. I'm still not totally happy with it, but I figured I'd left it long enough.

Next chapter: Saturday 18th May 2024 (if all goes to plan)