Chapter Text
On the worst day of his life, Damian Desmond loses his father, his brother, his two closest friends, his home, his school, and the girl he was finally getting around to being friends with.
His world collapses at the same time as his father does up on a stage, and he doesn’t even know just how much he’ll lose in the next twenty four hours.
After years of cold war with Westalis, the starting shot to actual war finally sounds in the form of a bullet though the head of Donovan Desmond. In the first hours after the death of the Chairman of the National unity party, cries for retribution against Westalis fill the streets as the government scrambles to mobilise the army.
By the evening, a press conference is called by the prime minister, who as expected announces Ostania will go to war. A nation's worth of citizens is flabbergasted as he goes on to announce it is not with Westalis, but Hugaria. A nationwide broadcast of a prerecorded video follows, spoken by the prime minister’s rival himself.
Ostania struggles to hold itself together as the now dead former Prime Minister Desmond reveals that he had been working towards protecting Ostania from the West for years only to discover the true threat lay to the southeast. He has the evidence to back it up. At the end of the video he even accurately predicts his own death.
That same night, the first airplanes arrive from Hugaria. They don’t even bother pretending they come from Westalis as they drop the first bombs. One of the first buildings destroyed is Eden Academy’s Cecil Hall dormitory.
Damian survives because he’s already on the way to Westalis by then. He doesn’t hear about Emile and Ewen’s fate until after he arrives.
The following days go by in a blur. Damian vaguely recalls the surprising presence of Mrs Forger in his and his mother’s protective detail. He remembers asking about his father’s funeral, and his mother’s silence for an answer. He goes through the motions, follows Mrs Forger’s every instruction, and tries not to think about pink hair drenched in red.
He turns ten on the day they cross the border to Westalis, and his mother holds him in her arms as he unpacks his only present with tears streaming down his face. She doesn’t scold him for crying at all.
When they arrive in the Westalis capital Kölona, Damian finally gets a moment to breathe, but he also finally hears about the destruction in Berlint, the chaos in Ostania in general, and the many lives that have been lost.
Weeks pass, and Damian wonders what good it does that he’s alive at all. If his classmates all perished, why does he alone have to carry on?
His mother tells him she is working on enrolling him into Carolin Academy and when he asks her why, she just looks at him for a moment.
“Don’t you want to go back to Eden after the war is over?” She asks, and it is then that he learns the school itself is not completely gone, though many of the students that survived the initial bombing have fled Ostania and there are currently no lessons.
Damian is still skeptical about going to school.
What is the point if none of his friends will be there? Ewen and Emile and so many other classmates will never sit in a room with him again. He studiously guides his thoughts away from a girl with pink hair. He always gets nightmares when he thinks of her too much.
Funnily enough, it’s Mrs Forger who convinces him to go in the end, and as he answers every single question, even those on classical languages, on his entrance exams perfectly, he thinks of a girl with pink hair and green eyes who could light up a room with a smile. He thinks of Anya and he hears Mrs Forger's voice in his head.
“I think Anya is probably looking down at us from heaven and cheering us on. We owe it to her to try our best to keep moving forwards.”
Her voice shook and her eyes shimmered with unshed tears as she said it, and Damian had never seen an adult cry before. He can’t blame her. She lost her entire family in a single day.
He asked his mother for study materials the next day.
He’s not sure who is more proud of him when he passes the exam with top scores. His mother, or Anya’s.
He knows he should feel proud of himself as well, but it all feels empty. Like the effort he makes to act normal takes all his energy and he has none left over to experience actual emotion himself.
On the morning of his first day at Carolin Academy, he goes through the motions. He mechanically pulls on his new uniform, forces a few bites of toast down, and steps into the car with Mrs Forger, who will drive him to and from school from now on.
He’s in the middle of crossing the large schoolyard when he hears the sound that will be his saving grace in the years to come.
“Desmond!”
A young voice calls behind him. Judging from the high pitch, it’s a girl. He knows the voice, but it’s so connected to another which he’s been trying to forget that he has trouble placing it.
“Desmond! That’s you right?!” His shock must make him slow in reacting, because the voice keeps calling out to him. “Damian, please tell me it’s you…”
The voice wobbles unmistakably, and Damian finally brings himself to turn around.
A few meters away from him stands a girl in a Carolin Academy uniform that looks as new as his. Her dark hair is tied in twin tails and her hazel eyes fill with tears as they make eye contact. Her bag has a worn little sheep plushy dangling from it and it bounces as she runs up to him.
Damian doesn’t know what possesses him to open his arms, but he does it just in time for the girl he only ever bickered with to jump into an embrace.
Her entire body shakes as she sobs and he can’t quite make out what she says, but he gets the gist of it.
“I’m glad you’re alive as well, Becky.”