Okay, I totally spaced on the last chapter with the Twilight reference. If you can find one, let me know!! I'd like to know if I put one in there by accident.

On a side note: I am aware that it might seem a little OOC right now, but there's a reason for it, that'll become more clear as the chapters go on! I've planned everything out for a reason.

Something that should make everyone very happy: Chapters are going to get longer (starting with this one)!!! This chapter totally changed direction as I was writing it (hey, when you're stuck in a car for 7.5 hours with no leg room makes you change your mind on some things), so the plot's a little different, but some things are going to remain the same.

Round of thanks to Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Chris Daughtry and The Veronicas for keeping the writing juices going.

DISCLAIMER: Richelle Mead owns the rocking VA series and its awesome characters.


I spent the weekend in the med clinic, under the watch- and careful eye of Alberta. It was the only way to escape the rumors, gossip and slurs. The gossip I could handle. Even the rumors I could handle; threaten someone with a black eye who was passing around a popular rumor, and it got squashed. It was the slurs that sent me running for a nice little cave. Most of them were pretty harmless, according to Eddie (who'd thankfully calmed down after the little demanding-answers situation; he apparently had been in the administrative building at the same time, and heard the shouting. He saw me and Janine leave and was then insanely curious.), but someone, most likely Moroi, worked up enough courage to start a little group to hiss "blood whore" wherever I went, thus setting off a chain reaction for the rest of the upper campus.

It was ironic that I chose the company of Dimitri. He himself had brought a whole new meaning to the term "blood whore" after I found out that he had grown up in a dhampir community in Siberia of all places. What drove the point home was the fact that Dimitri was the only male dhampir in his family. His father was Moroi, though visited regularly, and I think Dimitri mentioned once that his father paid the mortgage on the house his sisters and mother lived in. It was pretty nice, considering I was unsure of my father's own name.

Though spending hours with Dimitri was just about killing me and sending me to a very nice heaven, it would've been nicer, had Alberta not been there. I mean, she gave us our privacy and all, standing outside the room, and poking her head in when things got a little too quiet for Kirova's liking, but it was her presence that put a cloud on the happy feeling I was getting on the inside.

Still, I don't think I ever laughed as hard in two days as I did that weekend. The stories Dimitri told me proved that if I'd had siblings growing up and actually lived at home with my mom, I would've gotten myself into the same messes that Dimitri and his sisters did. Despite being the middle kid of four sisters, he was treated poorly. In fact, by the 16th wacky adventure, it seemed like they looked up to him, even his older sisters, Natalya and Nikita.

"Irkutsk was the name of the city," Dimitri said, late Sunday. "We lived in a little village of sorts right outside. It took us maybe fifteen minutes to walk to the city, and right before I came to America, my father gave us a tiny car. It could only hold two people, but getting into Irkutsk was much faster that way. I don't think Talya or Nikki ever learned to drive it. I did teach my mother, though. She insisted." Dimitri chuckled and shook his head, as if remembering a fight about the issue.

"I take it that you were very close to her," I said when the doorknob started to turn. Seriously, didn't Alberta have some other guardian duty to go do? Dimitri nodded solemnly.

"I still am," he said. "They still don't have a computer; besides, Americans have keyboard with English letterings. It's hard to write in Russian when half your letters are nowhere to be found. Writing by hand costs a lot of money, but it's worth it." Dimitri looked down at his hands. I reached over and took one of them, grasping it as tight as I could before he started feeling uncomfortable.

"I'd like to see them again, Roza. I think Nikita would have some problems with your attitude, but everyone else would absolutely love you. Especially my mother. She hates seeing me alone and sad," Dimitri said after a while.

I didn't say anything. The silence made something in my head click, because after a while, I realized he meant that he would like me to meet his family. That stunned me. I mean, I knew he loved me and all, but that was like saying you want to love someone forever. Human or not, meeting the other's family was serious business. As if sensing something in the air around me, he gave the hands that were holding his left a tiny squeeze, as if to comfort me.

"You're saying the next time you go back home to Russia, you want me to come with you?" I asked slowly, still in disbelief that he'd even think about something like that.

"Obviously, it might have to be after you graduate, but yes, I definitely want you to," Dimitri said defiantly. My head spun, but the part that was standing still was cheering more than when he slept with me, and the little time after that before the attack.

The dinner bell sounded, putting a tiny dent in my euphoria.

"I'll have to take you up on that some time, then," I said, standing up and taking my hands back. I picked up the bag I had started to carry around lately that held the silver stake no one knew I had unofficially among other things.

"See you tomorrow, Rose," Dimitri murmured after I stole a quick kiss. I smiled and practically danced out of the room.

Dinner was peaceful, to say the least. I was not myself; that part was obvious to everyone in the room. I was too excited to even eat, so I skipped getting food and headed over to the table that Adrian was sneaking a drink at.

"You know that I could smell that vodka from across the room, and the Moroi have better noses than I do?" I said, dropping down in front of him, the smell of the fresh vodka twisting my stomach. It didn't damper my mood, though. Nothing could.

"Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?" Adrian said roughly, taking me and my aura in. "Your aura's not so dark. I don't suppose you're going to tell me what's up."

"Nope. Not a chance, Adrian," I said, grinning and shaking my head. "You'll be lucky if I tell Lissa and you manage to squeeze it out of her."

"Tell me what?" Lissa asked, leaving Christian's side and sitting next to me, apparently noticing my mood change like everyone else. Christian made a face, but sat next to Adrian. Adrian, meanwhile, had taken another mini flask of vodka out of his coat pocket and drained it in two seconds flat. He moved over about half a chair, and stared at me, as if to figure me out.

"Nothing; though if it goes according to plan, you'd have to come anyway," I said, almost slipping up. My mood did darken just the slightest bit, but not enough for anyone to notice.

I'd be Lissa's guardian after graduation, so that would mean she'd have to come to Russia. Oh well. If Dimitri was correct on Nikita not liking me, then Lissa could be Nikita's American friend.

"Really?" Lissa asked, dropping her fork and brightening. She tugged on my shirt sleeve a little. "Where are we going? Paris? Rome? I've always wanted to go to Tuscany, you know, the country region of Italy? Oh, that'd be awesome…" Lissa whispered, going off into her own little trance of daydreams of where the mystery place could be.

"Knowing what I know, it'd most likely be Siberia," Adrian said, staring me down. I couldn't help feeling like a lab rat under a microscope. Lissa frowned.

"Siberia? As in Siberia, Russia? That cold wasteland? What's in Russia?"

"Irkutsk," Adrian said, still staring at me. I swore inside my head. Adrian sometimes knew too much, and he was just leading Lissa on to a disappointing end.

"What the hell is in Irkutsk?" Lissa asked, clearly confused now.

"Not in. Right next door. A dhampir community, as I seem to recall. One that, oh, I don't know, Dimitri grew up in?" The question was aimed at me, and I glared right back in response. Ever since Adrian got to prove his point about my liking older guys, he seemed to have a grudge against Dimitri that showed up like a bat out of hell. Lissa shook her head, showing her lack of awareness that conveniently showed up every so often, sometimes taking her balance right along for the ride into disappearing land.

"Why would we go- Oh, I get it now. He wants you to meet his family," Lissa said quietly. "And I would only go along since you'd be my guardian." I pressed my lips together, but dropped the glare. Adrian could be pissed at Dimitri all he wanted, in my opinion. Christian was still silent during the whole thing; he reached over and grabbed Lissa's hand.

"You know what Lissa? It'll be the last thing I'll be able to do on my own, thinking about myself, so get a life and get over your self. If I had it my way, I'd go tomorrow and drop out, because I'm sure as hell positive that Irkutsk is much better than here. And for your information, Siberia is not an arctic wasteland. Look up pictures on the Internet, because you're wrong. It is way more beautiful than Tuscany," I said, and stormed off, grabbing my bag on the way out.

The rest of the night blurred into the next two weeks. I ended up tossing my personal rule out the window due to the circumstances and visited Dimitri for about two hours everyday, where more hilarious stories would keep my mind off things.

At the end of the second Friday, the day before Dimitri got released, Alberta, unknowing to the kisses we stole everyday, left her post for a few minutes. Her shadow in front of the translucent screen disappeared, which lead to a quick, but heavy, make out session that ended when her voice started to float down the hallway, laughing at whoever she was talking with. I could feel that my lips were a little bit bigger than they should've been, so I kept my head ducked as I passed by Alberta on my way out. She smiled at me like she had no idea, though I prepared myself should that not be the case.

When Dimitri was released, he was given fifteen sheets on what not to do, but only three on what todo. He had been walking a little when I was in class, but Alberta and I helped him back to his room anyway. Down the hallway was much shorter a distance than the med clinic to the guardian's dorm. After Dimitri was situated in his room, Alberta took the same position as she did in the med clinic – outside the door to give us some amount of privacy. Kirova wasn't as bad as she seemed for the time being.

Dimitri was propped up in his bed, almost drowning in a sea of pillows. A stack of brand new Westerns sat within arm's reach – how those got there, and who got them was beyond me, but I was grateful. Dimitri wouldn't be too bored when I was trying to salvage my grades. I was sitting in the desk chair in the corner, my bag on the floor right next to the wall. Dimitri looked around for something, but didn't seem to be able to find it.

"Rose, could you hand me the pad right behind you, and the pencil sitting on top of it?" Dimitri asked, pointing to the desk behind me. I grabbed what he wanted and gave it to him, sitting myself next to him in the mess of pillows. "Thank you," he said, opening up the pad. Inside, were some of the most beautiful sketches I'd ever seen in my life.

"You draw?" I asked, incredulous to this new fact. Dimitri nodded.

"This is actually my old set. It's nothing special, just drawings of home I did when I found out I'd be coming here. My father gave this to me. I dropped the original pencil near the airport, and there were too many people to try to stop and find it. But this works just as well…" Dimitri said, trailing off at the end when he stopped at a sketch of five women.

"You can do everything," I joked, looking at the picture. Tentatively, he put an arm me, as I moved closer to him. "Is that your family?"

"If you put in my father, then yes. This was actually the first one I did," Dimitri said quietly, pulling his knees up a little to rest the pad on them. I traced the space above where the intricate vines circled the drawing.

"It's still beautiful," I murmured.

"I got in trouble a lot in school for drawing an array of things in the corners of my papers instead of actually doing the work," Dimitri said.

"You doodled," I said, mostly to myself, absorbing this fact. Dimitri chuckled.

"Is that what they call it in America?"

I nodded and pointed to the woman in the center. "Is she your mom?" I asked, resting my now blank nails in the tiny little space that wasn't shaded in. My manicure was gone, even the two little flicks of gold on the thumb I noticed the other day.

"Yes," Dimitri said, and then was quiet for a minute, like he was trying to put himself together and not lose it in front of me. Going in a clockwise circle, he pointed out his sisters, all of whom were smiling except for one.

"Natalya, Nikita, Elaina, and Victoria," Dimitri explained, tapping his finger lightly on Nikita, the one who wasn't smiling, like I had guessed. "Victoria's the youngest. She's your age, actually. It's funny; we all thought she was going to be a boy, and then when the midwife told my parents that she was a girl, my dad quickly changed 'Victor' to 'Victoria', 'a name' he told everyone, 'that he had heard in Europe'. Irkutsk is technically in Asia, so it was amazing to the rest of us that he had gone so far.

"And there's Elaina; she's about three years older than you. You could call her the most practical and realistic of the family. She always had a good head on her shoulders. She promised me that she wouldn't let our mother go insane while I was here, halfway around the world.

"Nikita; she's two years exactly older than me. We have the same birthday, and growing up it always bothered her. It was supposed to be her special day, and the fact that she had to share it with her younger brother upset her. My mother would get on her case, asking her if she wanted to be born on a different day then. Nikki always said yes, and then my mother would slap her and tell her to keep dreaming, because she was already born.

"And that's Natalya. She's probably my favorite sister out of all four. If I remember correctly, she's about three and a half years older than me. We were all born in April, except for Talya. She was always excited because her birthday was two months before Christmas, so it was always an onslaught of new things for her. She's a lot like you, Roza. Almost too much alike sometimes," Dimitri said quietly, resting his head on top of mine and sighing.

"I'm sorry if loving you makes you homesick," I said, joking a little. Dimitri laughed once.

"Not too terribly. Natalya was the most excited for me through her letters after I had to drag you back here. 'Meeting Roza would be by far neat, exciting and definitely interesting. I would love to meet myself one day,' Natalya wrote after a few months. She was happy that I found someone past remotely interesting. She claimed that was my problem growing up. I never really liked anyone past being friends. Despite what you may think, Rose, this is actually my first time really liking anyone outside of my family. It's an uncharted road for me, one I'm glad you're helping me walk on for the first time," Dimitri said, kissing the top of my head. "I love you, Roza."

"I love you, too, Dimitri," I said quietly, leaning into him, the both of us ignoring his physical pain and completely focused on the moment.


Chapaters 5 up this week and 6/7 up this weekend.

Shout-outs:
HA! None this update.