This is a little drabble I wrote a while ago and forgot about until I was looking through some old documents. I strongly recommend this series to anyone interested in a Steampunk/WWI/Mulan/Lion King story of pure awesomeness. This is my take on that scene between Alek and Deryn in the rookery at the beginning of...I think it was Goliath? I don't have the books on hand to look, so please correct me if I'm wrong!
All characters belong to Scott Westerfield.
"You're the best soldier I've ever met, Dylan. The boy I'd have wanted to be, if I hadn't wound up such a useless prince. I could never think badly of you."
The hand on her shoulder weighed all too heavy, and Deryn turned away, letting out a groan of frustration. Barking useless prince, indeed. More like a barking idiotic prince, one who was always (fortunately) too wrapped up in his own problems and worries about destiny and providence and stopping a barking war on his own to notice when her stories didn't quite add up.
She almost couldn't believe he'd actually fallen for the yackum about brothers not being able to serve in the first place.
Why couldn't the klaxon alarm sound right about now? Why not a sudden German attack, or a terrible storm, or even a combat drill, or someone asking her to bring Count Volger his barking lunch? Something, anything that could take her away from this blasted smelly rookery, bird clart everywhere, far away from his Princeliness Aleksandar von Hohenburg and his bright green eyes.
She was just so tired. Tired of the lying, day in and out, to every stinking wanker on this ship and her officers—tired of pretending to the only person who had deigned to not pretend to her (as much as Alek thought her was him). She was tired of hiding the shivers she got when he said her almost-name, of ignoring the flips in her belly whenever he casually met her gaze, of constantly telling herself over and over and over how Alek could never know who she was, because he'd run a mile, and blister it all, she was exhausted and if he decided his precious princeliness was too fragile to face a woman being a better man than he, then that was his barking problem. She knew he'd keep her secret. She was barking tired of keeping hers.
She turned away from his hand, swallowing the lump that was rising in her throat. Her heart was throbbing like a wee beastie in a cage, a flechette bat scrambling from the red light, and she subtly wiped her sweating palms on her pants. Whatever happened, she would not let him see any weakness. She was Midshipman Deryn Sharp of His Majesty's Navy, a decorated officer, and she had had enough of this nonsense.
"Dylan?" Alek asked, accent stronger, as it always was when he asked a question.
"And…" Her voice cracked. She cleared it, and turned to him. The sound of her own voice—her real voice—sounded strange in her ears after nearly two months speaking at an octave or so below her usual timbre. "And if I'm not the boy you wanted to be?"
And the world stopped spinning as the realization slowly lit up in his eyes.
Hope you enjoyed this! I'm sorry for the cliffhanger, I was never sure how to go on from there because I'm not sure how Alek would have reacted to figuring it out from Deryn herself. If you have any thoughts, please share!