DIMITRI IS BACK! Mua hahah! I know you love me for it! I know, I know, it took me a while… BUT ITS HERE! You can love me now and shower me with all of your wonderful, worshipful (HA! That's a real word…) reviews, which are awesome by the way! I think I just might break 100 with Chapter 11… which is after this one… so… yeah… READ ON friends, read on…
Deliciouse – Wow, you weren't far off on the idea… what happens is a little different though. And some… sour, yellow, citrusy fruit might be in your near future… :]
DISCLAMER:
Eddie throws down the book, glaring at it from where he stands, "I don't get it!" he declares, "It's all a whole bunch of girly shit!"
Gasping, VeronicaT picks up Frostbite from the floor and cradles it like a baby, "That bad man didn't hurt you… did he? Awww…" she babies, throwing glares over her shoulder every few moments.
"I see why she likes it so much," Adrain pipes up, blowing out a puff of smoke in Eddie's face, "Its because I'm in it."
"NO!" VeronicaT declares, "it's because Dimitri's in it!"
Speaking of the Russian God, he chooses to pop his head around the corner just as she says it, "I'm in what?"
Veronica T squeeks and hides behind her book, blushing profusely while Eddie rolls his eyes, "You write about having sex with him and you have wet dreams about him, but just being in his present's scares you?"
VT drops to her knees and bows, "I am at your service, master."
"Oh this is sick!" Adrian proclaims, facing the audience, "She doesn't own Vampire Academy… OR DIMITRI… so just read! God, anything for me not to see this twisted kind of love!"
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I pushed the wooden swinging doors open and stepped through them, into the big, almost empty gym. Against the far wall there were about twenty students sitting, enthusiastically watching the pair that was sparring. I didn't recognize the boy who was fighting, but I could see that he was having a lot of trouble keeping up with… her.
Roza. My Roza. She was beautiful, and graceful, so powerful, and it felt so unreal. It was like I was dreaming, and I half expected something horrible to happen to her at any moment, and for me to snap awake, wheezing and crying for her.
When I started walking towards them the students attention gradually moved to me, and when they didn't – or perhaps did – recognize me they started whispering amongst themselves.
"Why are you not paying attention!" She scolded the students, and their gazes snapped back towards her and away from me.
I wanted to call out to her lovingly and wrap her in my embrace and kiss her until our lips were sore, but I couldn't, not in front of all of these people, much less students.
"Guardian Hathaway?" I asked, though I already knew it was her. She froze and I could see the exposed muscles in her back tense. I was unsure what to expect, she could turn, see me and run into my arms, telling me how much she had missed me, or she could completely blow up on me and kick my ass… or at least attempt to.
It took her a few seconds to look at me, but when she did pivot elegantly her face showed nothing but shock. No love, no hate, just shock. Her lips were slightly parted and her eyebrows arched as though in confusion.
She was gorgeous. I searched her face, her lips - red and full and pouty, and those big, exotic brown eyes... I could tell she was doing the same to me, her gaze wandering around, taking in the subtle differences, like the bags under my eyes and the stubble on my chin.
My mind, neither subconscious nor conscious, hadn't been able to hold a candle to her in person. It had not captured the beauty of her, the dimensionality of her, the general picture, yes, but not the way the air seemed to glow around her, or the way other people lit up when they were with her.
The entire class had fallen silent, and Rose was the first to break it. "Dimitri…" she opened and closed her mouth several times, as though confused on whether or not she should be happy or angry, before deciding on her words.
"Class," she said turning away from me and back towards them, who were watching our exchange curiously, "this is Guardian Dimitri Belikov," I saw recognition flair in some of their eyes at my name, "and he has had the… audacity to ask me to spar with him."
She had decided on angry, obviously.
She turned back towards me, "Isn't that right, Comrade."
I raised an eyebrow, and started to speak, "Rose, I wanted to talk –"
"Come on, Dimitri." She said as she backed up, picking up a practice stake from where it lay on the mat, "Spar with me."
I stood there for a moment. Obviously she didn't want to talk to me, at least not yet. I sighed and licked my lips before shedding my duster and tossing it over to the bleachers for safe keeping, "Alright." I said to Rose.
She stood looking at me for a moment, in her eyes I didn't see hate, or disgust or anger. I saw something that made me want to claw my heart right out of my chest and die if it would make her better. She looked broken.
"Rose, I –" she didn't give me time to finish before she came at me. I mostly spent the time blocking hits, guarding myself against her angry fists. But as soon as she got a kick to my thigh I shifted into attack mode. I gave a hard punch that she easily blocked, and then she leaned back and kicked but I ducked just in time for her not to get a solid hit.
We were to in sync with each other, like always, and I doubted that either of us would really win this without one of us screwing up pretty badly.
She dropped to the ground in a crouch suddenly and both of her feet shot out to slam into my knees, which would no doubt bring me down, but I dived to the side and rolled so that her back was facing me. I didn't have a practice stake, which I realized now was a mistake, so I pretended to stake her with an imaginary one, but before my hand got there she turned and knocked it away.
It continued on like this for another ten minutes or so, neither of us making any progress. But then, just as I thought one of us would surrender I lost my balance, just the slightest shift in my weight, and she punched me. I blocked, but the force of the blow was enough to knock me back backwards and for Rose to lunge forward, her hand on my shoulders to pin me.
She brought the blunt ended stake down hard on my chest. I recoiled and yelled out, terrified. This was it, I was going to die. My jaw clenched painfully and I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, ready to embrace the pain. It was going to hurt like nothing else possibly could, like someone was shoving a searing hot mettle pole covered in acid straight into my heart. I had been staked once before and it was going to happen again, only this time I didn't think she would miss.
I waited for the pain, no – the agony – that I was going to experience, though it never came. After pausing for another few moments I opened my eyes again. My vision wasn't like I expected, I couldn't see every little eyelash on Rose, nor the imperfections, though slight, in her skin. My vision was almost blurry and it was completely silent, not at all what I was ready for.
And then I realized, I wasn't Strigoi anymore, and Rose wasn't clutching a real stake at all, it was blunt and dull and scratched up, not shiny and perfect and completely intact like a real stake would be.
I looked up at Rose, my laborious breathing matched hers. The look on her face was one of complete terror as she looked from the stake in her hand to my face and back again. Her chin trembled and her eyes glistened with unshed tears as her brown eyes locked on my face. "Dimitri…?" she asked, her voice quavering up at the end.
Everything was completely silent as I reached up and gripped her forearms, sitting up and guiding her with me. "It's okay Roza." I reassured, "It's going to be okay."
She opened her mouth to say something, her eyes darting back and forth between mine and I brought my hand up to brush a strand of hair back from her face. As soon as the pads of my fingers touched her cheek she was off me before I could blink.
"Class Dismissed," she called, and the students, who were all looking more than a little confused, filed past me. Rose caught one of them by the arm, the boy she had been sparring with earlier, and quietly talked to him. Whatever she asked of him he seemed reluctant to agree too, but he rolled his eyes and nodded before grabbing his coat and speed walking out of the gym.
I got up slowly, keeping my eyes on Rose as I collected my duster from where it was draped over a dummy. She had her back to me and her head down. She kept clenching and unclenching her fist and whipping at her face.
I waited for her to turn and face me but she never did, she only continued to stare down at the mat, letting out little sniffles every once in a while. I wasn't sure whether or not she knew I was still there so I broke the silence again, "Rose? Can we talk?"
She sniffed again and kept her head inclined away from me, "Go away," she finally said, grabbing her grey jacket from the bleachers and turning away from me, still hiding her face.
"Rose…" I said again, catching her wrist in my hand. She ripped her arm out of my grasp and started running, speeding through the gym doors and turning down the hallway. I cursed under my breath and sprinted after her, outside into the chilly late summer air. I watched her disappear into a building, and after bursting through the doors after her, I found out it was the dorms and there were students everywhere, looking in the direction that Rose had disappeared. I ran after her, gaining a lot of confused looks from the students as I went. I went up the stairs that she had taken, skipping every other one until I had reached the next floor, where Rose seemed to be.
A door slammed further down the hallway and I followed it, hopefully it was her room. It wasn't hard to find for she had pulled the door so hard that it didn't even shut and had instead bounced back, leaving it slightly ajar. I heard a thump and a muffled sob-like sounds issuing from the other side, so I pushed the door open, wincing as the hinges squeaked.
"Roza?" I whispered, stepping into the dark room.
She whipped around, her graceful body spinning easily to face me, and I could just barely make out her face in the shadows. She was crying, and when I say that I don't mean that her eyes were watering. I mean that her eyebrows were drawn together and her nose scrunched up in a futile effort to control the salty tears flowing down her cheeks. Her beautiful, pouty, rosy lips were parted and I could hear the little gasps issuing from between them. "Oh, Roza…" I whispered again, taking a step forward, into the room and towards her.
"Stop!" she shouted, "Go away!"
"Rose…"
But her hand flung out and she grasped at a book sitting on her desk. I was expecting her to be mad at me, to hate me, even, but I was not expecting her to throw things at me. I just barely shielded my face from the book that sailed through the hair at my head with my forearms when she had picked up something else to hit me with.
She pitched the object at me, though I was too busy trying to avoid it to pay attention to what it was, "Leave me the fuck alone!" she said, her voice a cold whisper through gritted teeth, grabbing something else to hit me with and advancing on me.
"Roza," I whispered, backing up a little bit and bumping my back against the doorframe, "I'm so sorry, I was stup-"
She cut me off, attacking me with her fists, "Don't. Call. Me. That!" she punctuated each word with a punch, though most of hits were sloppy and lacked the force required to really hurt me. She was fighting out of desperation, not because she was in danger, or because she wanted to protect someone, but because she was scared and upset, and she was responding the only way she knew how, with violence.
I had never realized until then that maybe she wasn't as strong as I thought she was. Maybe my leaving had hurt her just as much as it had hurt me. I wished, more than anything, that I could fix that.
"Roza," I repeated, catching one of her wrists when it came at me, though she continued to beat my chest with the other. "Roza, stop this," I whispered and seized her other hand, holding them both firmly in my grasp, against my chest, "Talk to me."
She continued to fight against me; using her entire body this time to throw me off of her. Eventually she stopped trying to hit me and instead tried to pull herself away from me, her cries turning into whimpers and please for me to release her.
"Let go," she whispered brokenly, pulling her hands away from me. I let them go this time, but caught her face in my hands instead, whipping away her tears with my thumbs.
I murmured her name and hugged her to my chest, burring my face in her hair. She still sniffed and trembled, but her hands found the collar of my leather coat and her she leaned her forehead against my chest.
After a moment I leaned back to look at her face and my eyes locked onto her's. She never said anything, and I didn't dare break the silence, instead electing to brush the hair back from her face and to continue to gaze into her eyes.
Another sob wracked her body and she went slack in my arms, curving backwards into me. I pulled her up so that she was off the ground and walked backwards towards the unmade bed, where I gently set her down and made to pull away, but her hands were clenched tightly to my coat.
"Don't go," she murmured.
I sat beside her, "I won't," I told her, sinking down on the soft white comforters.
She sniffed and looked down, hiding her face with her long, brown waterfall of hair, "I thought you hated me." She said, her voice cracking, "I thought that I disgusted you, and you thought I was weak for letting you do those things to me."
I felt my brow crease with confusion, "Roza, what are you – "
"And I hoped and hoped that somewhere in there you loved me. That maybe you were just tied up…" tears ran down her nose and dripped onto the blankets, where they pooled for a moment before being soaked up, "And then you didn't come and see me… ever. Then I heard you left, and I realized that you really hated me, and you didn't even care for me enough to come see me before they killed me." She had started shaking violently then, but still continued. "And even though I asked for you every time Abe came down to see me, you wouldn't come… and all I wanted was to see you again before I died, just to look at you. Even if it meant seeing what I lost, what I could never have, I still wanted to see you."
"Roza," I whispered, getting off of the bed and kneeling in front of her, "Rosa, I'm so sorry…" I brushed her hair away and pulled her chin up using my finger. The tracks that tears made ran down her face shined dully and I leaned forward to kiss them away.
"Why are you here?" she asked, jerking her face out of my grasp, face transforming back into one of furry, "Why are you here now when you hated me then?"
I grasped her hands and she tried to tug them away but I kept my hold, "I've always loved you Rose. There has never been a moment, and there never will be as long as I am alive, that I didn't love you." I stroke the side of her face, my fingers sliding along her smooth, moist skin, "I thought you would hate me for what I had done to you… I was worried that every time you looked at me all you would be able to see was the monster I was."
Her eyes softened and I stopped gripping her hands in case she now wanted to get away from me, but she didn't move them.
"Everyone is so worried about you, and we want you to come home," I told her, stroking her hands with my thumbs.
She shook her head and a few more tears escaped her eyes, "I can't. I need to find someone."
I was so caught up in her eyes, big and brown and glistening with tears, that all I could mumble was a halfhearted reply as I leaned forward to hug her against me,
She wrapped her arms around my neck and I supported her little frame in my arms. Suddenly, before I could react, she tilted her head in such a way that our lips met in a kiss.
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BO YA! That's the latest chapter! Hope you liked it!
Who wants a lemon? I do! They are just so tangy and sour… I could eat them allllll day!
Yeah, but seriously, how long do you think Dimitri can keep his hands off of her? Or vice versa…
You shall discover if you click on the little "REVIW THIS CHAPTER" button at the bottom of the page, tell me just how much you need me to write about some… naughty things…
A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: We hope you enjoy the….um…climax (HA get it?) in the next chapter! Veronica is working her ass off! So review, review, review, so she won't procrastinate, my sheer will power won't keep her writing! Also, if you could explain to her that asking people online to tell her what naughty things they neeeeed is dangerous/ pervish/ kinda scary… that would be awesome.
Sincerely;
Tallanted Publishing!