The memory of that first anniversary still cut him to the quick. Tears silently rolled down his cheeks. He still felt the loss of his family every day, but mid-December, within reason, always crushed him. Jaxsen surmised that while his heart was breaking at the reminders of what he’d lost, he was simultaneously being healed by the family he now found himself a part of.

Sebastian kissed his temple and Jaxsen smiled through his tears. “I love you, Jack.”

“Promise?” He couldn’t keep the desperate disconsolateness from his voice.

“Promise, promise, promise. And you know what they say about triple promises…”

“They can’t be broken.”

Sebastian squeezed him gently. “That is what they say.”

Jaxsen huddled further into Sebastian’s hold. “Bastian?” The strain in his voice caught Sebastian’s attention.

“What, sweet boy?”

“Do I have to go to school tomorrow? I really don’t wanna go. Can I stay home with you? Will you stay with me?”

The two questions were asked as one, in a rapid-fire motion. “No, baby, you don’t have to go to school tomorrow. I called Mr. Geller and got you excused until Thursday. You can stay home tomorrow and Wednesday, deal?”

Jaxsen nodded. “Okay, thank you.”

Sebastian kissed his temple again. “You’re welcome, Jack.”

There was a great pause in the conversation, both losing himself in the feeling of holding and being held.

“I think I made a new friend today.”

“Oh, yeah?” Sebastian smiled over Jaxsen’s head.

“Mhm. I-well, I went after lunch and talked with Melissa Flannigan. The one who lost her daddy…” At Sebastian’s nod he continued. “Well, I didn’t see her at recess and Basil said that she stayed in the lunchroom. So I went and found her. I…I told her that I knew how she felt because I lost my mommy and daddy. I told her how sometimes it’s hard to properly express things to grown-ups and that if she needed someone to talk to and understand, that she could talk to me if she wanted to. She didn’t say anything for a while and I thought that maybe I was bothering her so I stood up and went to leave, but then she called me back and asked me to stay. So I did. She didn’t really say much about her daddy, but we talked till it was time to go to class.” Jaxsen blushed deeply, his voice becoming shy. “Th-then she walked around the table and kissed me.”

Sebastian grinned, a chuckle escaping him. “Jaxsen, you dog, you!”

Jaxsen sat up and smiled for the first time that day with a small giggle jailbreaking from his vocals. “She kissed me on the cheek, Bastian!” he exclaimed, playfully punching him on the shoulder.

“Oh, sure, you say that now,” Sebastian teased. “Tell me then, Mr. Michaels, why are you turning all red in the face, huh? You look like a little cherry tomato.” Sebastian poked him lightly on the nose.

Jaxsen glared but it soon melted into a smile. Sebastian smiled back, glad he could make his boy laugh. “I’m glad you made a new friend, Jack. And I want to tell you I’m very proud of you.”

Jaxsen blushed again, grinned, and looked down. “I didn’t do anything, really,” he denied with a shrug, the blush spreading across his neck and under his shirt.

“Oh, I beg to differ. That was a very sweet and brave thing you did,” Sebastian countered gently.

Jaxsen shrugged. “I don’t know how brave you’d consider it,” he denied again, still not making eye contact.

“I would say extremely. Can’t you see why?” Jaxsen shook his head. “Well, was it easy for you? Was it a simple thing to not only decide to seek her out, but to actually follow through with the decision? When you found her, did you find it easy to take a seat with her? Was it easy, Jack, to tell someone, someone you don’t know, that you know from personal experience what it’s like and how it feels to have a beloved parent suddenly gone?”

Jaxsen sniffled and shook his head. “N-no. No, Bastian, it was really hard. I was scared and nervous. I’ve never talked about my mommy and daddy before to anyone. Just a little to you and Nizhoni. No one ever cared before. And, and I didn’t know how she was going to react. But I wanted to maybe see if I could make her feel better.” Jaxsen wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist.

“And did you?”

Jaxsen smiled a bit then. “Yeah, I think so. She smiled at me and kissed my cheek. Then she hugged me and told me thank you.”

Sebastian smiled. “And that, my boy, is why it was brave. You took a chance. You opened yourself up to someone you knew was hurting like you are. Despite what you’ve been through, you put aside how you feel for someone else, and that leaves you vulnerable. But because of what you’ve gone through you’ve learned what it’s like and how it feels to be in a similar place, and you gave that little girl reassurances no one else could have given her. You’re a good boy, Jack. And I really am proud of you.” Jaxsen smiled and blushed again.

When Nizhoni did finally arrive home she came into a sight she’d never grow tired of coming home to. Jaxsen lay on top of Sebastian’s lap, the boy’s head nestled against Sebastian’s shoulder. Sebastian had his legs resting on the coffee table to better support Jaxsen’s weight, his arms wrapped securely around his small frame. She smiled and kissed Sebastian gently awake.

“Hi,” he whispered

“Hi,” she whispered back with a bright smile.

“What time is it?” he asked, scrubbing his face in an attempt to wake up. She smiled at his sleepiness. These moments in-between wakefulness and sleepiness, to Nizhoni, he was his most adorable.

“Almost 9:30.”

He frowned. “Oh. I didn’t realize I had fallen asleep.” He yawned and Jaxsen shifted, a small frown consummated itself on his forehead at the interruption their conversation was causing to his slumber. Sebastian shushed him gently, lightly pressing his lips to Jaxen’s temple, and slid his fingers through his hair. Soon Jaxsen quieted back down and smacked his lips in sleepy contentment. Once he was sure Jaxsen was sleeping again, Sebastian wiggled out from under him to awaken the sleeping appendages of his body. He stretched cramped muscles and felt his blood take up its normal pathways, then he welcomed his love home properly. He kissed her deeply, his tongue sliding across her lips seeking permission to enter. She granted him access and deepened the kiss, a soft moan escaping her as he pulled her a bit closer against him.

Jaxsen came awake with a start and a gasp. Instantly he was aware it was still dark out, he wasn’t in his own bed, and he was alone. He rubbed his eyes and looked around the darkened room. He could see shadows dancing on the walls, a visage of silhouetted trees dancing in tune with the wind’s melodies. He could not quite calm his pulse and though the perspicuity of the chimera was not an image he could resurrect, it still left him quite shaken. He debated on if he should remain in bed and try and calm himself back into sleep, or if he should seek out Sebastian to make him feel better. While for the most part, Jaxsen’s fears of becoming a nuisance in Sebastian’s eyes was beginning to not molest the few securities he’d managed to gather, the unknown vestiges of the dream still echoed around his subconscious.

For reasons unbeknownst, his eyes leaked salt-water tears he felt were a betrayal. The house was quiet. Too quiet. His pulse picked up speed, his breath coming a bit quicker. He glanced at the clock. 2:13 a.m.. The beacon red numbers threw him into a time not so long ago, on this fateful night at 2:13 a.m.. He decided he needed Sebastian and discarded the blankets he’d been wrapped in. As the images flashed through his mind he was no longer at the residence of Sebastian Green, but at the home he had shared with his mother and father.

He watched the monitors as the men went from room to room, looking for him and failing…

He sat in the back corner of the safe room, his back against the wall, his legs pulled up, and his arms wrapped around them. He was cold. He rubbed his arms in a vain attempt to keep warm by creating friction. Tears fell relentlessly down his cheeks. He did not make a sound. The men on-screen ceased their searching, raising up in a meerkat-like fashion, listening…listening…

Jaxsen listened, too. Then he heard it. Sirens. The men scattered. Jaxsen emerged from the safe room to an image he will never forget. He collapsed next to his mother, his cries no longer reticent from fear but wails from loss, terror, and devastation.

Slowly Jaxsen descended the stairs, his right hand sliding down the banister. He could feel the panic gripping him, anxiety seized his heart and plucked the air from his lungs as easily as gathering grapes off the vine. Through blurry, tear stained vision he saw the living room deserted. The kitchen was dark. He was alone.

Sebastian leaned against the railing that lined the back porch. It was warm for mid-December Indiana, resting for the night at forty degrees. Nizhoni stood beside him, not the least bit bothered by the winter air. They’d been standing there on the back porch for the better part of an hour talking. 

The weight of the coming day was finally beginning to take its toll. He’d done well thus far on keeping himself composed for Jaxsen’s sake, but now in the early morning while the city slept he discussed his sorrow with the woman to his left.

“He was a good man, Zhoni. He saved my life that night. On several nights. And after all that he did for me, I didn’t even know. Off playing Jarhead while my godson is being…” He sighed and gripped the wooden railing a bit tighter, his hands not registering the cold’s bite against his skin. “I failed him.”

Nizhoni frowned. “Glen?”

“Glen. Jaxsen. Sara. All of them. I failed them all.”

“Sebastian, you cannot possibly blame yourself for what’s happened to that boy. It’s no one’s fault except the bastards that did it. You spent six months tracking him down and getting custody. You have done more for him in the past…not even a year than anyone has done in almost the last three. It will do you no good or no good to him if you keep on this destructive pathway. You--”

Whatever else she was about to say was cut off by a sharp, shrill scream full of terror that emerged a single word within it. “Daddy!”

He didn’t see or hear any movements or sounds from anywhere inside the house. 

“Bastian?” His voice was weak and choked, no louder than a pleading whisper. The fear increased as the house lie still in its echoing silence. “Daddy? Daddy?” The call grew in volume and with it intensity. At some point Jaxsen’s knees refused to support his weight any longer and he unceremoniously wilted to the floor. He curled in on himself trying to offer himself minute consolation. He did not succeed in anything other than to remind himself he was alone again.

He howled a sob, “Daddy!” Calling out one more time, the word breaking several times as his sobs escaped him.

“Jaxsen!” His name barely registered to him when Sebastian burst through the sliding back door.