And the toughest part is that we both know
What happened to you
Why you're out on your own
Merry Christmas, please don't call
Merry Christmas, I'm not yours at all
Merry Christmas, please don't call

Her father received an invitation through his business, and with one of her half-brothers down with some sort of flu, Mor was his guest to the Minister's ball. She arrived on time, which was slightly unlike her especially at this point in her life, but mostly because she was here with her father. She drank champagne and marveled at the snowflakes that floated in the glass, although her tone was slightly sarcastic. She chatted with frequent library customers. She watched Brooks Watson from across the room, while trying very deliberately to look as if she was not watching him.

He was seeing someone again. Morrigan knew this information in the way she knew most things about him — by keeping careful tabs, and by occasionally appearing in his home, although they had never discussed the girl. It was one thing to know this and another to see her, with him, from across the room — once she'd ascertained what she was seeing, Mor committed to conversing in a different room of the hotel.

She left early, as she was wont to do, and told her father she was going to floo home. (Not because he was chaperoning her — they had largely done away with that ancient custom when she committed to being a spinster — but because it seemed polite when she was here as his guest.) Except instead of going home, she too the floo to the Leaky Cauldron, wrapped her scarf around her head to mask her face, and walked over to Brooks' building.

It wasn't difficult to break into his flat. She'd done it before. She lit the candles and helped herself to one of his wine bottles, and was drinking the crisp white wine from it when he unlocked the deadbolt that she'd re-locked after letting herself in. "You should really change your locks, you know," Morrigan suggested, from her seat in his parlor armchair.

The corner of Mor's lip twitched up, and she carefully tried to will it back into her usual neutrality. When they were courting, and for much of the time when they'd been engaged, she'd had a private game she played, and she had never been sure that Brooks knew she was playing it. Mor wasn't a very expressive person, but when she was around Brooks, she veered closer to it than usual — and sometimes she'd wanted him to know that she was smiling, but that she only wanted him to see it.

It was cruel, now, to play that game. It was cruel enough to step in on him, but she had never once actually tried to stop herself from doing so. "Probably not," Mor said, tilting her head up at him. She tapped one of her rings against the glass she was holding, creating a brief tinny sound. "But you would make me work more for it."

She could, Mor thought, get him to do anything that she wanted. "I thought we could have a drink," she said, her tone implying a joke even though one did not follow. "For old time's sake." She wanted to know more about his fiancée, but she did not want to have to ask, so she wouldn't.

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "I got you something. For Christmas."