Massive shout-out to my beta, Amy ( sagemb - AO3/tumblr), for literally typing up this chapter for me to get me moving on putting it up. I'm working two jobs to afford a cross-USA move & my laptop's hard drive died, so I've been understandably strapped for time/ability in working on this. But alas! Tomorrow the laptop issue is being addressed (finally) and I've got all of chapter eight typed, so the next one should be faster. Thanks for your patience!

"Rose? It's Lissa."

"I'm at the doctor," Lissa continued. She sounded like she was still trying to process something. It made Rose slow her steps and was a welcome distraction from her anger at Abe - her father - just moments ago.

"Are you alright?" The bond was pretty hard to touch at the moment then, but Rose would bet money that she felt fear and disbelief from Lissa. "Is everything okay? Are you hurt?"

"No, Rose, I'm fine," Lissa soothed and Rose was able to relax for half a second until Lissa added, "I'm pregnant."

"What?" Oh my god. "How did that happen?"

"Well, you see, Rose, when two people love each other very much…"

"I can't believe you're joking about this," Rose said. "That's my job."

"I have to, or else I'm going to fucking lose it."

There was the trembling voice Rose knew so well. "Do you not-"

"No, no, I'm happy about this. Very happy, actually. It takes some of the pressure off Jill to stay alive, at least until I can get the quorum law repealed."

"Then why are you freaking out?"

"Because Queens aren't supposed to have children out of wedlock."

"Do you know when you're due?"

"January."

A month after the wedding date.

"I have no idea what to do," Lissa said quietly.

"That's-" Rose narrowly dodged a car running a red light as she crossed the street, flipping the driver off and shouting a swear she'd heard from various Belikovs in the past. "That's tough. Does anyone else know?"

"Christian is here with me. Well, not at the moment. I think he's in the bathroom having a panic attack. This is a little sooner than when we planned on having kids."

"So you're definitely keeping it?"

"I know it's not what's easiest, but… I can't imagine not. Besides, as difficult enough as it is for Moroi to conceive, we don't want to waste the opportunity, y'know?"

Rose idly wondered how Lissa would react to Karolina's casual abortion suggestion a week ago.

"Jill knows, too. I went to her when I first suspected. She talked me down from the ledge, got me a couple pregnancy tests. I took, like, five, and they all said yes. This doctor appointment was just to confirm."

Well that explained the weird pause in Rose's phone call with Jill a week ago.

"When was this?" Rose asked.

"Twelve days ago." Lissa would be the type to count the days. "I didn't want to say anything until I knew for certain. I'm sure you've got enough on your plate at the moment."

Rose's first instinct was to deflect Lissa's concern, reassure her that one would always care what was going on with her best friend, but she stopped herself. If she truly wanted to find herself and be her own person, she couldn't also be Lissa's emotional sounding board every time she had a problem.

"I keep busy," Rose replied instead.

"How are you?" Lissa asked, sounding grateful for the chance to change the conversation. "I know we haven't talked recently."

A roll of nausea cut off whatever answer Rose would've given, clicking the final piece of the puzzle together. "Actually, it's funny you should call me about this."

"What, you're not-"

"No." Anxiety at the thought of being pregnant welled up and Rose took a deep breath to pull herself back together. She had all the confirmation she needed that it wasn't her morning sickness. Time to grow up and stop freaking out about it. "I thought I was for a couple of days, but you've cleared things up for me. I've been-still am-pretty nauseous for the past week. Some puking, too. Last time I worshipped the porcelain gods this much, I was a freshman at my first high school party."

The sound of the door opening came muffled over the line followed by Lissa asking Christian if he was okay and Christian assuring her that he was.

"I'm sorry," Lissa said to Rose when she came back to the phone. "I was wondering how this would work, with the bond."

"Have you not had morning sickness?"

"I did. It was worse about a week ago. I guess you're only going to feel it if it gets bad."

"Yeah, well, let me know when your boobs start getting sore so I can be ready."

"Other than this, you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm doing fine, I guess."

Murmuring on the other end between her and Christian. "Rose, listen, I'm really sorry."

"For what?"

"That you were pressured into putting the brakes on a relationship with Dimitri."

"That was months ago," Rose lied, thinking back to her conversation with him the previous night. "Why are you bringing it up now?"

"I've just been thinking lately, about how Christian and I are getting married and Jill and Eddie are having a baby in a few months and Adrian and Sydney are seriously talking about moving. All your friends… we all have a person, someone we can share our days and lives with and you're out there, on your own. I don't know, it didn't hit me how lonely that could be until the other day."

Rose was silent. It wasn't like she needed to correct Lissa.

"And then you're told no, you can't even make a connection with another person. I don't know. Like I said, I've been thinking a lot. It's got to be really hard."

If you only knew how not lonely I am.

"It doesn't change anything, I know," Lissa was saying. Rose couldn't tell if Lissa was aware of her silence. "But I want you to know I'm aware and I feel for you."

"Thank you," Rose replied, not the least bit guilty about not mentioning that she and Dimitri were actually a legitimate couple now, as far as either of them were concerned. Still, the sentiment that Lissa was thinking about her perspective-even explicitly saying so-was comforting.

"Oh! I remember now-earlier, I asked how you were, you kind of insinuated you'd thought you were pregnant for a hot second…what did you mean by that? I thought it was weird, but I might have misheard you."

Rose froze, replaying the conversation… no, she hadn't implied anything. She'd actually said the words I thought I was. "I've been puking-" Truth. "And my period was late." Lie, it had shown up a few hours after her test, the day it should have. "So I freaked. Doesn't every girl worry about Immaculate Conception when she's late?"

Lissa laughed. Good. Better than having to explain herself or invent some imaginary lover completely unconnected to Baia or the Belikovs.

"I have to get back to work," Lissa said. There was some rustling on the other end. "Call me next week if I don't. We haven't really chatted in a while."

Rose went down a mental list of everything Lissa didn't know. Dimitri. Being a bridesmaid for Karolina. Abe being her father. She found she really didn't want to share any of that with Lissa. It was nice having some stuff to herself.

"I will," Rose promised.

"Adrian did the math, by the way," Lissa said, tone indicating this was indeed the last thing. "You'll be back home twenty-four weeks from yesterday."

"That's still six months away," Rose said dryly, turning onto the Belikovs' street.

"I know," Lissa sighed. "I just miss you a lot."

"I miss you, too," Rose said, more an automatic reflex than any kind of genuine response. Rose really hadn't felt any kind of homesickness or longing to be back with her friends since Sydney and Eddie had shown up in the middle of the night for a surprise trip to St. Basil's two months prior, and she realized that as she approached the house she was starting to think of as 'home'.

"Alright, I really have to go now. Call me next week!"

"I will," Rose laughed. "Bye, Liss."

[They] at least claimed to practice "participant observation."… In rhetoric, it is called an oxymoron: to observe while participating, or to participate while observing, is about as obvious as savoring a burning hot ice cream.… Although during my fieldwork I never knew what I was doing or why, I am struck today by the clarity of my methodological choices at the time: it all took place as if I had decided to make "participation" a tool for understanding. In all my meetings…I let myself be affected, without trying to inquire or even to understand and remember.

- Jeanne Favret-Saada, Unbewitching as Therapy (1989)

Her encounter with Abe was still bothering her a week later, so after running a couple of errands for Olena, Rose curled up on one of the rickety folding chairs that made up the back porch and called Dimitri.

He answered almost immediately. The sound of chatter filled the background. "Belikov."

"Is this a bad time?" she asked, voice catching. They spoke twice a week, but she was missing him particularly hard that afternoon.

"No, no, it's never a bad time for you to call, Roza." The chatter faded as he spoke. "You're crying."

"I, um…" She sniffed loudly, dragging her free hand against her nose. "I talked to Abe a week ago. Apparently he's my dad. Father. I have no idea what to call him."

"Call him whatever feels right." It'd only been a couple days since she last talked to him, but hearing his warm, gentle voice soothed away some of her rougher emotional edges.

"It feels wrong to call him Dad."

"Then don't. I've always believed that anyone can father a child but they have to be earn being called anything else. It's one of the few things my father taught me."

It made sense. "I'm surprised you let that man teach you anything."

"None of it comes from a good place, I'll give you that."

That elicited a laugh from her.

"It's something I live by, though, among other rules."

"What else?"

"Respect those who call you family, so long as the relationship is healthy. If you feel the need to resort to physical violence, you need to remove yourself from the situation, Strigoi notwithstanding." He paused for a heartbeat. "Treat the woman you love like the goddess she is."

She smiled, most of her earlier agitation gone. "Goddess, huh?"

"Roza, you couldn't be further out of my league. I wake up every day amazed that you've let me this far into your life."

By then, she was full-out grinning. There was a sincerity in his words that deepened them past the flirty pick-ups guys had used on her in the past.

"Don't worry, comrade, half the time I'm convinced I've made you up in my head. You're too perfect to exist."

"I am far from perfect, Roza." He had to miss her as much as she was him - never had he used her nickname so much. She wasn't about to complain though; every time he said it, she floated a little bit higher.

"You're all the perfect I need," Rose said, feeling like she would suffocate if she didn't get the words out.

He sucked in a breath. "I miss you so much."

"I do, too. More than you can imagine."

"Do you want to talk about your conversation with Abe?"

Damn. He'd done such a good job of distracting her.

"It's okay if you don't want to," he added.

She pulled her phone away. It was a little after two and lunch still wasn't ready, something Olena had apologized for when Rose ducked out to make the phone call. There was still time to talk. "No, no, I do."

She recounted her meeting, taking comfort in his steady breathing on the other end. When she finished, she felt little more than mentally drained. "I don't know what to do," she said quietly.

"I think you're doing the best you can, given the situation. You said yourself that you needed some time. Talking helps, too, so I'm glad you called me. You can and should reach out to people. There's no reason to go through this alone."

"I'm not alone," Rose said automatically, wanting him to know how she felt. "Not when I have you."

"Good. That's…good." He sounded like he was struggling for words.

"Cat got your tongue?" she teased.

"That…makes no sense. At all."

"You were having a hard time with speech there," she clarified.

"I was having a hard time trying to express…I don't even know anymore."

"So this would be the twelfth time I've left you speechless since you went back to work."

"No, it's the eleventh."

"Um, it's definitely the twelfth."

"Um, it's definitely the eleventh."

"Don't mock me, at least not until you work on that atrocious American accent. Also, it's definitely the twelfth, or did you forget that night you called me last week?"

"…You're right on this one. But I'm still winning fifteen to twelve, so it really doesn't matter."

"Of course it does," Rose said, pretending to be offended. "There's a huge margin between fifteen to twelve and fifteen to eleven."

"Yes, because one is such a huge gap."

"You're impossible to catch off guard."

"You're just straight up impossible."

"Mm, but I have it on good authority you like that side of me."

"I like every side of you. Except the spontaneous side. That one terrifies me sometimes."

"Oh? And why is that?"

"That's the side of you that will probably be the death of me when you make me jump out of an airplane."

"Well now you're just giving me ideas," she teased.

He swore in Russian. "Forget I ever said anything."

"Too late, comrade. That's gonna be our twelfth real first date."

"I still think shark cage diving would pose less of a threat to our lives."

"Boring," she drawled. "I want to see you wrestle a shark. I think you could take one on. You're big enough."

"This is a ridiculous conversation."

"Yeah, but it's fun to think about, especially considering the fact that neither of us have had a vacation in years."

He sighed. "I know I say it a thousand times whenever we talk, but I really do miss you, ridiculous conversations and all."

"It is more fun when we can plan imaginary vacations in person."

"It's only fifty-six more days."

She didn't mention how the family was coming up early for Vika's graduation. Better to surprise him. It would be more fun for him.

"If we could go on a ridiculous vacation, where would you want to go?"

She dug a toe into the ground, grateful that the weather had finally been warming up recently. "What are my parameters?"

"None. You can go anywhere, do anything. Money's not an issue."

She thought about it. "I don't know. As long as it was us, I wouldn't care. We could hole up in some cabin on a mountain for a week and it would be the best vacation of my life."

"A cabin on a mountain?" He asked in disbelief. "I feel like you'd get bored within five minutes."

"Yeah, okay, well, I wouldn't if there was Internet. And TV. And someone to cook me breakfast," she added, looking up to see Zoya poking her head out of the back door and whispering that lunch was ready to eat. Rose nodded back in understanding and the girl dashed off.

"That's a lot of conditions."

"You asked."

"I did ask, you're right," he laughed.

Grinning, she bit her lip. "Can I call you back in a little bit? Lunch is calling my name and a growing girl needs food."

"Understandable. You are pretty short as it is."

"Hey. I'm not short, you're just freakishly tall."

"So that's a no on talking to you in the shower later."

She rolled her eyes as she entered the house. "Good-bye Dimitri. I'll call you tonight."

From: Rosemarie Hathaway

To: Marie Conta

CC: HRM Vasilisa Dragomir

Date: June 22 at 18:48

Subject: Interviews

Attached are the final two interviews. My apologies for their delay - I've been under the weather the past month or so, a fact Her Majesty can attest to.

Regards,

Guardian R Hathaway