"Let me wash my hands first," he said as he handed Vicki off, lifting his hands and wiggling his fingers at her. He had just changed Miss Poopy Pants, after all. He smirked as Cosmo appeared from where he'd been hiding somewhere downstairs. It had only been a few short years since Cosmo had been a Christmas present from Vicki. "And where have you been?" he asked the dog, as if he was expecting a reply, as he made his way toward the bathroom to scrub the germs from his hands.
"Oh, charming." All dressed for bed and ready for her feed, Emily cuddled into Vicki's arms as she was handed off, sucking on her mother's neck for something to do while they waited for Daddy to get back and provide the main course. Cosmo followed Jon into the bathroom, nudging at his leg before he moved to sit obediently, tongue out as though he was grinning up at his master.
Jon turned on the faucet to scrub his hands clean, glancing down at the silly dog that was nudging at his leg. "Yes, can I help you?" he asked with a smirk, knowing the dog probably wanted one of three things - food, a walk, or attention.
Attention was a good bet at this point. Cosmo had been trailing around the party all evening with Loki, Piper's dog, both of them begging the very best scraps money could buy from various suggestible relatives and playing enthusiastically with children of myriad ages. The one thing Cosmo hadn't had much of, however, was attention from his favorite people, and now they were secluded for a little bit, he was going to make the most of that.
Jon knew Cosmo well enough to be able to read his body language, and he'd kept half an eye on the dog all evening, so figuring out what the dog wanted was mostly a matter of a process of elimination. "What's the matter, boy?" Jon asked the collie. "Missing your favorite humans?" He ruffled the fur between the dog's ears before leading the way back to Vicki and Emily. "See" She's right here. All safe and sound," he told the collie, taking a seat beside Vicki to take over with the bottle if she wanted him to.
Cosmo ruffed happily at the attention, padding after Jon as he returned to the couch and the girls. As Vicki gently transferred Emily and her bottle into her father's arms, the dog lifted his paws onto the redhead's lap, sniffing first at her bump as though making sure it was still there before leaning far over to sniff at Emily's feet. "You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say someone has been missing us this evening," Vicki commented, one eye on the television as she scritched at the collie's fur.
"He's been pal-ing around with Loki all evening," Jon said as he cradled Emily into the crook of his arm and offered her the bottle, which she latched onto greedily. "Has Dru been on yet?" he asked, glancing to the TV set, knowing why everyone had been half-glued to the set all evening. It wasn't every day you saw your baby sister on TV, and even rarer that baby sister was a real live princess.
"No, not yet," Vicki grinned, nodding toward the TV. "But it looks like the main event is just getting started, so I suppose she'll be making an entrance any time soon." Unlike Jon, Vicki had a slightly better idea of how it all worked in Dru's other life, but not even she could accurately predict how Tirisano were going to present the only surviving members of their royal family to the upper eschelon and the public watching the live feed.
"I wish she'd been able to stay," he remarked with a small frown. Despite all the craziness, he really liked being surrounded with family during the holidays, at least for a little while. "You don't think I have any other long lost siblings wandering around out there somewhere, do you?" Though he was grateful for Des and for Dru and loved them dearly, it was a little unsettling to have siblings you never knew existed pop up unexpectedly every now and then.
Vicki let out a soft grunt as Cosmo jumped up onto the couch with them, draping himself mostly over her lap with his nose on Emily's feet. Her arm wrapped itself comfortably around Jon, her cheek touching his shoulder. "I wish I could tell you yea or nay for certain, stud muffin, but that's a little beyond my reach," she admitted with a gentle sigh. "But I think, with all the publicity over the last couple of years, if anyone else was going to come crawling out of the woodwork, they would have done it by now." She kissed his cheek affectionately, aware of the noise of the party below through the open door of their suite as a dull murmur of merry sound.
"So long as they don't come crawling out of the woodwork just looking for a handout." He wasn't stingy by any means, more than generous with his money, but being a Granger sometimes meant having to deal with people who were only interested in fame and fortune and riding on his coattails. "I kind of miss Johnny and Liv, don't you?" he asked, looking back at Emily to see how she was progressing with the bottle.
"True, it is a little dull around here without Sparky and your ever-present sidekick around," the redhead chuckled, following the line of his gaze down to their daughter as she suckled on her bottle. "Can't really blame them for wanting to spend this Christmas in New York, though. They have family there, both of them, for the first time in a long time. They should spend the holidays with them." A fanfare made itself known through the quiet buzz on the TV, and she looked up, a grin touching her lips. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have princess."
Jon chuckled. "She's my assistant, not my sidekick," he pointed out. He would have remarked on the fact that Johnny and Liv had not yet been blessed with a small bundle of their own, but he was distracted by the fanfare on the TV and the announcement of his baby sister's arrival. Unlike Vicki, there was no smile on his face as Dru's presence was announced on the TV set - he was too worried about something bad happening to her, despite knowing all possible precautions had been taken to keep her safe.
The ball was being shown live with only a five second delay - in case of bad language in any interviews - and though it seemed as though there was little to no security to the untrained eye, if you knew what to look for, there was so much it was a wonder anyone had managed to get into the Itana Palace at all for the ball itself. The wide double doors at the head of the ballroom opened as Vicki and Jon watched, revealing His Serene Highness, Prince Julius, ruler of Tirisano, and the Princess Royale, his heir. Dru was virtually unrecognisible - gone was the slightly lanky, awkward teen who dressed in dark colors and lots of layers; the princess stood tall in a beautiful ballgown, a tiara delicately set in her upswept hair, every inch the young woman she had been born to be.
"Bloody hell," Vicki breathed. "We have to get her out of that girls' school. She deserves to lose her virginity to someone she actually likes before they marry her off."
"Good grief," Jon muttered upon seeing his baby sister's entrance. It was like something straight out of a fairy tale, though Jon knew, as much from experience as anything, that it was a lot of window dressing. "Bite your tongue, Vicki. That's my baby sister you're talking about!" he said, not really wanting to think about such things. He knew the chances of Dru enjoying a happily ever after were next to nil, but he refused to give up hope.
Despite her smirk, Vicki knew better than to push this particular topic with Jon, simply settling close to him as they watched Dru and her uncle take to the floor to lead the first waltz of the night. "She looks beautiful," she murmured softly. "I hope someone remembered to record this - Des and Lena will be devastated if they miss it."
"She is beautiful," Jon corrected, as he watched his little sister looking very much like the princess she really was. "Knowing Humphrey, he'll make sure they don't miss it," he pointed out as he watched, so intent on what was going on in a distant nation that he didn't notice that Emily was reaching the end of her bottle. "I have a feeling she'd rather be here than there," Jon said with a small frown, unsure how he was supposed to feel about having royalty for family.
Luckily for the baby, Vicki was tuned into that peculiar sound that comes when a bottle is nearly empty. She reached over and removed the bottle from Emily's lips and Jon's hand. "Burp her before she starts wriggling again, love," she suggested, letting Cosmo sniff the empty bottle in her hand as her eyes drifted back to the TV screen. "I'm sure Dru would rather be here, but she's got a very strong sense of duty. This is her first public appearance since the majority of the royal family died. I don't know about you, but I feel rather proud of her. She doesn't look anywhere near as scared as she must be feeling."
Were killed, not died, thought Jon, though he didn't vocalize that thought. It was Christmas Eve and it was supposed to be a happy occasion, a celebration. The last thing he wanted was to be accused of being morose. "Of course I'm proud of her," Jon assured his wife, tearing his eyes away from his sister long enough to hoist Emily onto his shoulder and rub her back. "She's a good actress," Jon remarked as he looked back at the scene playing itself out on the television set. "I just worry too much, I guess."
"Well, you know as well as I do that for every guest in that ball room, there is at least one security guard," Vicki pointed out quietly, understanding Jon's worries but needing him to stop assuming that the worst would happen. Of them all, Dru was the one who would be in constant danger for the rest of her life, purely because of who she was. But that didn't mean that she wouldn't be protected from that danger. "And that the palace in Itana is one of the most secure places on Rhy'Din, even more so since the incident. She's safe there, and if all else fails, take a look at her hand." She pointed at the screen, and sure enough, on Dru's hand was visible a familiar ring, complete with bloodstone. "The Grangers are on call for her 24/7, Jon. She'll be fine."
"Yeah, I know," he admitted, Vicki's reassurances helping him relax a little. "I'm just not sure how I'm supposed to react to having a princess for a sister," he admitted. "I know, I know....I should just treat her like everyone else, but she's not like everyone else, Vicki. She's going to be a ruler someday. That makes us relatives to royalty," he continued, though the royal line came from Dru's mother's side of the family, not from the Grangers. Of everyone in the family, he was probably best suited to understand what it felt like to live your life under a microscope, and he didn't envy his little sister that part of her life.
"True," Vicki conceded with a half-shrug. "But we're the poor relations no one needs to know much about." Beside Jon's ear, Emily let rip with what sounded like a joyful burp, her head nodding down onto his shoulder once again as she slumped, almost asleep once again. "All you can do is treat her well, Jon. Like an equal. You're one of the few people in her life who can do that."
"What do you mean?" he asked, glancing at the little half-asleep bundle on his shoulder before looking back at Vicki. He understood that he should treat Dru just as he treated the rest of his relatives, but he wasn't quite sure what she meant by the last part of her statement.
"Well, think about it, Jon," his wife pointed out gently. "In Tirisano, she has her uncle, who is naturally her superior because of his rank. He can't not treat her like an inferior. But conversely, she's constantly surrounded by aides and servants and civil ministers who have to treat her as their superior; they have to address her by her title. Similarly, any friends she has there will have been closely vetted by the government and her uncle to make sure they conform, and she doesn't know if they're really her friends or just playing a part because she's the Crown Princess. Here, she gets to be just Dru. She isn't a different rank to the rest of her family, she doesn't have friends who are only her friends because of her rank. And she has brothers and a sister who don't look down on her, or up to her. She doesn't have to be a princess here. She gets to be herself, and the way you treat her is a big part of that."
"Why would I treat her any differently than anyone else? I know what it's like to have people fawn all over you just because you're famous or because they think you have money or whatever. There was a time when I thought that's why you wanted to date me." Of course, he had long ago learned that wasn't true, but what he was trying to point out was that he thought he understood at least a little of what Dru had to deal with. People on Rhy'Din had never been overly impressed with his fame or fortune, but on Earth, it was an entirely different matter. It seemed to be the same in Tirisano, though his sister was royalty, not just a movie star.
"I'm not saying that you ever would treat her any differently, Jon," Vicki tried to tell him, choosing not to comment on his remark about his initial thoughts about her. "I was trying to offer some kind of perspective, that's all. I don't have the first idea what it's like, do I" You know better than me how it feels to be in the spotlight."
"Yeah, but do you think I do?" he asked, looking for Vicki's perspective on things, even if it was in a roundabout way. "Do you think I treat her differently than Lena?" he asked, really not knowing for sure if he did or not, though he tried not to. Though he'd grown up with Lena, much of his past was a blank. It wasn't a lot to build a relationship on, and it had been something of a struggle for him, with Lena remembering things Jon had forgotten. With Dru, he could start fresh.
Vicki considered him for a moment, giving Cosmo a shove off her lap before she started to overheat. "I think maybe you put a little too much emphasis on her rank in your mind," she offered quietly. "Maybe you should try to just look at the young woman, rather than see the princess. But no, I don't think you treat her in any way that isn't warm, and loving, and entirely appropriate for a big brother."
"I'm trying, Vicki," he admitted with a thoughtful frown, as he always did when he was feeling unsure of himself or worried about something, little crinkled worry lines forming on his forehead. "I'm not the eldest anymore, you know." Though that didn't really get him off the hook, as he had only met Des a short year ago.
"Like that matters," she pointed out, brushing a kiss to his cheek. "It isn't worth upsetting yourself over, love. We have a baby to put down, and a party to get back to before some of your cousins decide to come and find us themselves. And we got a chance to see Dru all dressed up and sparkly. That was the point of the evening, right?"
"I wish I'd seen Dru all dressed up and sparkly live in person," he admitted a little sadly, but on the other hand, a few months ago, he hadn't even known her at all. "She's had a rough go of things. I just want her to be happy, Vic. That's all," he said, smiling a little at the affectionate kiss to his cheek. He turned his head toward the little warm bundle snuggled against his shoulder. "Sleepy time for someone," he said, rubbing Emily's back gently as he moved to his feet.