Just another revelation ficlet, but I thought I'd give it something of a different spin. And bump up the number of fics in this section, because it's kind of depressing.
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Furious.
Why was he furious? He shouldn't have been. Dylan - or whatever her real name was; she hadn't graced him with that knowledge - hadn't really done anything wrong, from his non-military perspective that should have been so much more forgiving.
Was it because Dylan had kept it from him, even after he'd given away everything, every last one of his well guarded secrets? No, he understood. If he hadn't been such a horrid liar, he would have hidden his herritage until the last too. Some things just didn't belong out in the open, even between friends.
Was it because he thought she didn't belong here, on this ship smack dab in the world of men? No, that was wrong too. Dylan's abilities, her personality, her love for the ship and for flying; those things didn't change just because he suddenly knew she was a girl. She'd been a girl the whole time, even when he'd thought she was a boy. And if that month spent with that strong willed girl - with both of those strong willed girls, he corrected himself - had taught him anything, it was that the world of men he'd thought placed women in the home didn't exist. The planet wasn't divided so neatly, just as between the Clankers and the Darwinists, into places for men and places for women. It was just the world.
Was it jealousy, then, that this girl was more of a man than he had ever been? No, that was something he'd admired about her, no matter her gender, and couldn't bring himself to feel bitter about, not when they'd first met, and not now.
No. It was because the most simple, pure experience with a boy his own age had turned out to be not so simple after all. That was what he'd loved about their friendship, that with Dylan, he could pretend he wasn't a prince, with real responsibility at far too young an age; pretend he'd grown up in a house and not a palace, and maybe in Britain, around beasties, rather than in Austria, around gears; pretend the guilt of his parents' death and an entire war didn't weigh down his mind; pretend to be just like his friend, without a care in the world it seemed.
And now, with those three little words, Dylan had taken all that comfort and simplicity out of his stay on the Leviathan, placed little hidden meaning in every previously innocent encounter between them, made him embarrassed to be in the same room with her, and made his breath catch whenever he caught a glimpse of her. She'd made everything so complicated.
Wasn't Prince Aleksander's existence complicated enough?