AN: I think there will be one more chapter after this one to wrap things up. There's a bit of a twist at the end of this chapter, and it's meant to be light-hearted and fun, so please don't read too much into it :) This story isn't canon, but it's not going to change anything major in the future canon. As always, please let me know what you think, which parts you enjoyed and what needs work. Thank you in advance for reading.

"Carlos is gonna kill me," Dom groaned, his fists propping up his chin and his gaze following the smoky swirl of the marble flooring within the mansion.

By the time any adults had showed up, the fight had been over. Anya's opponent had run off crying, Marcus had relented beating on Liam and the other remaining boy, and Colton had still laid crying on the basketball court, his broken nose spurting blood all over the ground.

Marcus, Anya and Dom all sat on a bench in a long hallway, just outside an office somewhere within the winding maze of the mansion where the officer's ball was being held. They'd gotten marched here by Marcus's parents, who'd arrived just a few minutes before the fight had broken out.

The injured children had been rushed away to private doctors, and angry parents were discussing what to do behind the thick cherry door.

"He won't find out unless you tell him," Marcus said calmly, seated on Dom's left, while Anya sat on his right.

"Oh, yeah? He's not going to notice you have a black eye tomorrow at school?" Dom asked.

Marcus shrugged. "So I got in a fight. Doesn't mean you did. Carlos knows I punch first and ask questions later. It's part of the reason I was home schooled for so long."

"Won't your parents call and tell my parents?" Dom asked. If Marcus had gotten into a fight at a party Dom or Carlos had invited him to, Dom knew his mother would call another kid's parents just to explain what had happened because she'd want to know if it was her kids.

"Trust me, they won't," Marcus said. "It's not the first time I've gotten in a fight with Colton. If I don't tell them you were involved, they'll assume you were just a bystander."

"Me being there started it," Dom said.

Anya laughed harshly at that. "It didn't start with you. It started generations ago. My mom says if you go back far enough, all these families are related and they all hate each other."

"If you all live in these great big mansions, why can't you all get along? The only thing Carlos and I fight over is all the stuff we have to share. The bathroom, our room, the phone…stuff like that."

Anya smiled. Some of her hair had gotten loose from her bun, and when she turned away her hair fell down over her cheek and hid the expression. Marcus snorted a laugh.

For a moment, Dom thought they weren't going to answer him, and he didn't appreciate being left out of the joke.

"No, really? I don't get it. What's missing?" Dom pressed them.

"Love," Anya said, glancing wistfully over at Marcus for just a second when he wasn't looking before letting her hair fall over her face once more. "Love is missing."

"The inmates are running the asylum," Marcus told Dom. "These kids are raised by nannies. The only way to get attention from their parents is to claw their way to the top of the pile among their peers. If they can't do that, then sometimes behaving badly does the trick."

"Is that why you came to our school?" Dom asked.

Marcus nodded. "I was tired of the games. Everything is so competitive, but in the long run, the things they think are so important don't matter at all. After you graduate from high school, no one's going to care if you won a hundred spelling bees when you were six, or became a star thrashball player."

"Your parents are different," Anya said softly. "They don't care about the stupid trophies. That's why they let you do what you want. Do you know what my mother would say if I told her I wanted to go to a public school?"

"Probably the same thing my parents would say if I told them I wanted to enlist," Marcus replied. Then, to Dom, he said, "The expectations are high, and lots of kids buckle under the pressure. Does that make sense?"

It did make sense, in a way. If Dom grew up to be a mechanic with a wife at home taking care of the kids, his parents would be thrilled. If he went further, they'd be even more thrilled. As long as he lived a good life and treated people well, he knew his parents would never be disappointed in him.

"My mom does love me," Anya said. "She just doesn't know how to do anything but be a career officer. She's out on the front line, fighting. If I complain about kids at school, she just tells me to suck it up."

"They want us to be independent and solve our own problems, but then they want to tell us exactly what we should be when we grow up," Marcus said.

"What do you want to be when you grow up, Marcus?" Anya asked softly.

Marcus just shrugged, and as much as he seemed like a small adult most of the time, in this he seemed like a normal kid for once. "I don't know. Not a scientist, like my parents. I don't mind learning science, but working inside all the time is boring."

The door opened, and Adam Fenix stood in the doorway. "Marcus, we need to talk to you for a minute," he said, waving his son to join him.

Standing up, Marcus marched after his father without missing a beat. He didn't even seem afraid.

"What're they going to do to him?" Dom asked when the door closed, leaving the two of them alone out in the hallway.

Scooting to the edge of the bench, Anya sighed and then got to her feet. She reached down to scratch at her knee where the concrete had torn the leggings she wore beneath her dress, leaving her with a small scrape oozing blood.

"They won't do anything to him," she confided. "They'll lecture him. His parents will probably have to pay something to Colton's parents to pay for his medical bills. After that it'll all be settled and forgotten."

"They won't call the police?" Dom asked.

"Ha! The police?" Anya laughed, like that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "Are you kidding me? These people don't let their kids deal with the police. If they do that, then the whole story will be in the news, and no matter how many times Colton needs a nose job, they'll never do anything that would draw bad press to their social circle."

Music from the live band in the ballroom floated down the hallway, and Anya glided across the smooth marble floor in time with the soft notes of the waltz. She was incredibly graceful, in spite of her long limbs. Even at such a young age, she was already tall for a girl.

"I'm really sorry about your cousin. Hopefully he's okay," Dom said belatedly. He wasn't sorry for Colton, but he liked Anya, and he didn't want her to think less of him and Marcus because of a fight with her cousin.

Anya's eyes went cold, giving Dom the feeling there was no love lost in that family. "I'm glad Marcus broke his nose," she said, slowly twirling around. "Colton's my second cousin, and he hates me. He says I'm an embarrassment to the family."

"Why?" Dom asked innocently. "You seem really nice."

"My mom won't tell anyone who my father is so everyone thinks she had an affair with a married man."

Dom felt his cheeks burn red with embarrassment. He hadn't meant to bring up such a painful topic, especially with a girl he'd just met. "Oh, sorry." The apology seemed woefully inadequate, but what else could he say?

"I understand if knowing that changes your opinion of me," Anya said ruefully, like the same thing had happened so many times before, she just resigned herself to a fate of being forgotten or thought less of just because of how she'd come into the world.

"Why would it?" Dom asked, genuinely confused. "I got plenty of friends with no old man around. I still like them, and I like you, too."

"Really?" Anya asked, cautious even in taking him at his word, her thin face brightening in surprise at his declaration.

"If you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you," Dom said, and shrugged, like it was just that simple.

Anya smiled, and Dom couldn't help thinking she was beautiful when she did that.

Standing up, Dom cleared his throat, straightening his borrowed jacket. "Would you like to dance?" he asked, holding out a hand to her and hoping she didn't shoot him down.

Letting her hair fall over her face, she peered at him, continuing to dance on her own. "You won't win any friends hanging out with me. Marcus doesn't even really like being around me."

"That's because he doesn't see how pretty you are," Dom told her, still holding out his hand. "But someday he will."

Anya took his hand, and they danced like they'd seen adults dance, swaying with the music. They didn't make eye contact, but now and then they'd giggle. Dom twirled Anya around, going up on tip-toe to hold her hand as she turned, since she was slightly taller than him.

"You like him, don't you?" Dom asked after they'd danced for a while, and run out of other things to talk about. Anya had told him a little bit about her life at boarding school, about the other girls in her class, and how she never felt like she fit in or had a real home.

"It's pretty obvious to everyone but him," she said morosely. "At first it was just a fun crush and I thought I did a good job keeping it a secret, but people figured it out and now it's just embarrassing."

"If he doesn't ask you out in a few years, then I will when I'm old enough," Dom promised her. He couldn't stand sad girls. His mom called him her little knight in shining armor. "Mom says I can't date anyone until I'm sixteen."

Anya laughed at that. "I'm pretty sure my mom won't let me date anyone, ever, so don't worry about it."

The song ended, and the two of them parted slowly, letting their hands drop apart.

"I had a really good time hanging out with you tonight, Dom," she told him softly. "You're not like anyone I've ever met."

"I had a lot of fun too," Dom said, realizing it was true, in spite of his mind-numbing fear of his mother finding out he'd gotten into a fight at an officer's ball.

Quickly, Anya leaned forward and took his face in her hands, pressing the barest brush of a kiss to his lips. Blushing at her own boldness, she tried to leave quickly, but Dom caught her hand and pulled her back to him, slipping a hand behind her head like he'd seen actors do in movies and closing his eyes before he kissed her for real, gently pressing his lips against hers and holding there for just a moment before pulling away.

They both smiled, suddenly shy.

"Bye, Dom," Anya said, and he let her hand pull away from him and she waved before running off down the hall.

"Bye, Anya," he said, unable to help smiling.

Taking a seat on the bench to wait for Marcus, he couldn't help but tap one foot in time with the next song, still grinning like an idiot.