Chapter Text
Much to Damian’s dismay and Anya’s delight, they were assigned to work together on a history final that would be due at the start of the new year. After fathoming her unsatisfactory midterm grades, Anya was determined to pull ahead by the end of the semester, and she was entirely convinced that there was no one better to help her achieve that goal than the second son himself, thanks to his strong penchant for the subject.
As soon as class was over, they headed to the library and grabbed every relevant title their arms could carry, pouring over dense texts and combing them for every minute detail related to the event they had chosen. The sun had long since set, leaving them surrounded by a wayward sea of open books and loose notebook papers. Anya sunk her cheek into the palm of her hand and nibbled at the cap of her pen, swinging her legs under the table as she watched Damian’s eyes dance back and forth over a lengthy paragraph.
After realizing that the rest of the library was empty and assuming that Damian would not be interested in idle chit-chat when there was so much work to be done, she grabbed the first book off the top of their unread pile and cracked into it. She skimmed through the old, worn pages for a long while before something caught her eye.
She cocked her head to the side as she studied the details of the portrait she had stumbled upon—a nobleman with a stern face and pair of very familiar eyes.
“Hey, wait a second,” she squinted and held the book up to get a closer look—the man in the photo had a strong jaw and dark hair that curled up into an unmistakable cowlick over his right eyebrow.
“This guy looks just like you,” she gasped as she made the connection. She immediately began skimming the text below the photo for any mention of the Desmond name.
There were many bottomless rabbit holes surrounding the specific battle they were researching, which seemed to be the case with the most prominent historical events. Anya had a difficult time memorizing timelines and the significance of strangers, but the possibility of digging into Damian’s lineage would certainly be a delightful source of motivation.
•••
Damian all but lunged over the table and snatched the book straight from her grasp.
“No, he doesn’t,” he barked before even glancing at the photograph. Once his eyes locked onto it, however, both his face and his thoughts told an entirely different story.
He squinted his eyes and leaned closer. He patted the breast-pocket of his jacket and shot Anya a vicious warning glare as he pulled out a pair of gold, wire-framed glasses. He hated the way they looked on him, and Anya’s jeering solidified that every time he put them on.
He had destroyed his eyesight in his youth with uninhibited overexertion, straining far too hard to study in the dark for far too many hours on end. He wore them as rarely as he could get away with, fully knowing that would only make the problem worse—but going blind was a more palatable fate than offering Forger a stubby leg of mockery to stand on.
Little did he know, she really liked the way he looked in glasses, the giggles were just a clever deflection.
He pushed them up the long bridge of his nose as he focused in on the black and white photograph of a man in a military uniform. He swallowed hard when he realized he was staring right back at his own face, but older, wiser, and far more rigid.
“See?” She hopped up and stood behind him, leaning in over him to take a better look. Her soft pink curls tumbled over his shoulder—she smelled of strawberries and cream. “Am I wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he said in a harsh whisper as he scanned the text for the Desmond name, but there was nothing to be found. He squinted harder and peered begrudgingly through his bifocal lens, noting that the man in the photo had lighter eyes—it was black and white, so it was hard to tell, but they weren’t the same dark shade of brown as his father’s. He combed through the text again for his mother’s maiden name—and when he found it, he moved his thumb to cover it at once.
Forger made him cold-sweat. She seemed to possess an eerie sixth sense of sorts, and he didn’t want her knowing his family names at the risk of having her dig into his history. Not that she was intelligent enough to embark, but he had learned a lesson or two about underestimating her capability.
“He’s cute,” she cocked her head to the side and leaned in even closer for a better look. He could feel her warm breath down the slope of his neck.
“He’s old enough to be your father, you wretch,” Damian scrunched his nose, ignoring how fast his heart was beating in his chest.
“Still cute,” she shrugged and sat back down in her seat. “Is he your grandpapa or something?”
“No,” Damian spat, which was true. He had met his grandparents on both sides before they had passed. His great grandfather, however…
“So he’s your great grandpapa, then?” She filled in the blanks, getting antsy for him to say it out loud so they could discuss it.
“Why do you care?” Damian lifted the book up and started skimming the rest of the chapter.
“Because we’re doing a project on this war, and it says right here—” she reached over the table and he made to pull the book away, but she grabbed it by the binding and smacked it down roughly on its back. She flipped back to the first page and pointed to the accolades beneath his great grandfather’s photo, “—that he was a colonel. That’s a pretty big deal, isn’t it?”
“Mmh,” he made a small, noncommittal noise, not wanting to confirm or deny her assumption. It was a pretty big deal. But furthermore, as he read on, it dawned on him that he certainly had heard of him before.
He had his personal journal.
Damian racked his brain for exactly where he had seen it last—it was a blue, a hardcover book with old, worn pages. He had come across it as a child but the script was too complex to decipher, and his mother would not allow it to be passed off to Jeeves to read it for him. Where was he with his mother and Jeeves in his early childhood? He knew for certain that book was not kept at the Desmond Estate—Melinda did not like to discuss the topic of her own grandfather.
Damian’s knuckles clenched around the textbook as he tried desperately to remember which of his family’s properties he had seen that book at. He pictured Jeeves’s face and recalled a memory of a small baby bunny that he had found tucked away in the brush. Jeeves knelt down beside him and cupped the bunny gently in his palms, offering Damian the opportunity to pet its head as he explained the necessary care regime for an animal so small and so new. Damian’s heart clenched in his chest—he was a tender child back then. He was a hardened man, now.
He recalled the smell of the bonfire, and just like that, everything fell into place. It was his mother’s cabin up in the woods. They had only ever been there once, the year before Damian started school at Eden. One of his greatest strengths was his steel-trap memory, but he was far too young at the time to understand the purpose of the visit. What he did remember, however, is that they took the trip while his father was away on business, and Damian was firmly instructed to never breathe a word about it to anyone, which he never had.
He needed to get that book.