Hypnos skidded into the room to the vision of Damien drenched in blood, standing very still.

“Shit. Did you kill it?” Hypnos asked.

Damien attempted to wipe the blood off his face with a shaking hand, also covered in blood. “Yep.” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “Yep. I think he’s dead.”

Hypnos side-stepped to get a look at the corpse. “Damn. That was quick.”

“Yep.” Damien responded again. Then he noticed Krampus’s bloodied burlap sack rustling next to the bed. The shock of the fight and the blood wore off, and he stepped over the Krampus corpse.

Hypnos said under his breath, “Like father, like son... Like mother, like son, really.”

Damien opened the bag, and out popped a small boy with a brown teddy bear. Damien had to blink a time or two. It was almost the same bear. The boy in front of him was almost him, but smaller.

“I appreciate it.” The boy said flatly as he stood without fear.

Damien blinked again. “It was nothing.”

The boy nodded. “Okay,” was all he said.

Stepping over the monster in the same determined manner Damien had, the small child began to exit the room.

Hypnos glared at the ungrateful child and said, “And a happy Christmas to you!”

The boy turned with an exaggerated smile. “Aw geez! Thank you, Mister!” And the boy ran from the room, his footsteps disappearing down the never-ending hall.

Damien’s brow scrunched. “Well, that was weird.”

“Best not think on it.” Hypnos bent down and grabbed the monster by the horns. “Let’s move this somewhere else before Thanny finds out. He’s going to be pissed.” Hypnos began to snicker.

Damien didn’t even bother to stop to ask why Thanatos would be pissed. Just the thought of him being angry was enough for him to jump to action. The basement and Thanatos’s experiments loomed in his mind- strapped to a hospital gurney, needles, tubes and wires, like being in a nightmare asylum.

Damien grabbed Krampus’s cloven hooves and began to move forward, but Hypnos, who had hold of the horns, was moving towards Damien.

“What- Where are we going?” Damien asked.

“Er...” Dream took stock of the room. “Under the bed!”

“Under the bed?”

“Yeah. Under the bed.”

Damien groaned and then moved backwards, both of them shuffling and squatting and twisting, trying to move the angry-looking corpse under the bed.

Then came Thanatos’s voice, ”What are you doing?”

Hypnos and Damien dropped the body and stood erect.

Death’s dark form frowned at them from the corner of the room.

Hypnos raised an accusing finger, “He did it!”

Damien’s jaw fell. “What the fuck happened to you having my back?”

Death growled. “Damien. Language.”

"Really?” Damien blurted out a laugh. He didn’t think now was the time to be playing house. Daddy Thanatos telling him to watch his language like he was actually a child was laughable.

Hypnos chimed, “I told him not to do it, but, psht... I think he’s got a hero complex.”

Damien said, “I do not have a goddamn hero complex.”

"Language! Damien, please. Did you or did you not kill an iconic pagan folkloric figure named Krampus?”

Hypnos sucked in his cheeks and shrunk off to the side.

Damien snorted. “I did, but-”

“And did you or did you not disobey my direct orders to keep away from Hypnos?”

Damien smiled coyly. “Technically, it wasn’t an order-”

“And did you not break curfew to go galivanting off with this...cretin-”

“Oi!” Hypnos blurted, offended.

“-to kill an important Yuletide icon?” Thanatos finished.

“Technically, I didn’t break-” Damien huffed, realizing his arguments, though solid, were also futile. There was no use having an intelligent conversation with a man who saw him as nothing but a child. Damien gave up and conceded to playing along, “Okay. Yes.”

Death nodded. “Damien, we’re going home. Hypnos- I can’t believe I’m asking you to do this, but, make a new Krampus. I cannot have this incident disrupt the balance of things, and he is expected to make an appearance at the ball tomorrow eve.”

Hypnos grinned ear to ear and rubbed his hands together. “On it. I owed this one money anyway.”

Damien started fuming, looking over at Hypnos, “Did you play me to get yourself out of debt?”

Hypnos only flashed him an innocent smile.

Damien started towards him, “You son of a-”

“Damien...” Death’s cold tone intervened.

Damien’s shoulders fell. He stepped around Hypnos and Krampus to stand by Thanatos’s side like a scolded child.

“In the morning you and I are going to have a very long talk,” Death said.

Damien only nodded, and suddenly he was back in his room, on his bed, which he assumed he had never left in the first place. Given that Hypnos was Dream, it was probably all just that- a dream, which is also why his argument that he hadn’t actually broken curfew was, in his opinion, sound. Not to mention that if he were free, he wouldn’t have a curfew because he wouldn’t have a master. Thanatos was just the next in a long list of masters yet to come.

But, he didn’t return to sleep. He couldn’t sleep. His mind ran over and over this talking to he was going to get. Despite not being a child, he was terrified of getting in trouble.

His imagination got the better of him and kept him awake. Thanatos was going to put him back in the bottle - no, the basement - because he misbehaved. There would be no more Christmases after that. Thanatos was going to take his ears because he couldn’t seem to listen, or take his free will because he couldn’t seem to mind. Those things had happened to him before, over and over again in a predictable pattern. Patterns repeat themselves. It would happen again. It could happen with this supposed long talk in the morning.

The Darkness crept in and rocked him back and forth to quell his anxiety. It told him he had had worse, all comforts are temporary, and that he knew better than to get used to them.

He glowered into the glassy black eyes of the stuffed teddy bear sitting upright on his bed. Refusing to embrace the lie of comfort, he took the bear and shoved it in the farthest corner of his closet.