Disclaimer: Yeah. I'm not Libba Bray.

I can't be bothered to come up with a witty, intelligent disclaimer.

Also, I use a rooooood word here – I actually did my research too. Apparently, the word fk originated in the 1800's and was the acronym for For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. It was to do with prostitutes or something. So, the word would have existed, and Gemma would never have heard of it but Kartik is clearly a wise one. Like the kids that know the meaning of the word 'condom' before anyone else. Ahahaha ... mental picture of Kartik looking at a condom with a quizzical expression on his face ... oh dear.

To prevent any legal battles, I am IN NO WAY insinuating here that Kartik ... frequented brothels. It's clearly not true. Clearly.

Clearly?

Ahem. Anyway.

Sometimes, you will find yourself balancing precariously between two lives, lives you might have had. You can choose: which abyss will you fall into? This one, or the other?

I choose the other.

I race after him, thistles and thorns puncturing the silk of my soles, and I do not care. All I need is for him to love me once more, forgive me my failings and tell me that he will live with me. That he can live with me.

"Kartik, please. I know I've said this so much over the past day, but please."

He turns, and his eyes are a condescending mix of sadness and pity. "Please what, Miss Doyle? Listen to you, forgive you, kiss you, fk you?"

The word is foreign, and tastes strange on my tongue as I mouth it in the darkness. I have no idea what it could mean. Fk. To pity? To love? I really have no idea, and the smirk on his face shows that he knows of my ignorance.

"Don't worry, Miss Doyle, I would be disgusted if you knew the meaning of it."

"What ... what does it mean?"

He laughs, a smoky, husky thing that disappears into the cold of the woods. "No, Miss Doyle. Now, what was it you wanted?"

"I'm ... Kartik, I'm trying to apologise!"

"Absolutely. Are you done yet?"

"Kartik, please." And here I decided to slip out of my skin once more, but in a different way, a dangerous way. Tell him something that I am not sure is truth. Whisper it to him anyway and hope for the best. "Kartik, I know that you love me. I know that you love me. You cannot tell me otherwise. You can call me arrogant and childish and a silly little schoolgirl all you want, but I know that the way ... the way you touched me is ...was ... real."

"Miss Doyle, you are embarrassing yourself."

"No, I'm embarrassing you, Kartik. I'm telling you things that you could not even admit to yourself. And they are true. They. Are. True."

"No, Miss Doyle, they. Are. Not."

"Kartik, my name is Gemma!"

He looks at me for the longest time, and when he speaks, his voice is soft. "Not to me, it isn't."

It sends, not a spear, but a shock, a frisson of electric heat, through me. It ... it almost cripples me. Offends me. Does he really think that little of me? Really think that I think that little of him?

"Yes, to you, it is. I only want to be your Gemma. To have you ... to have you ..." To have him what, I do not know, cannot form on the end of my tongue, but it seems as if my half sentence is already enough and too much for him. He lets out a humourless laugh, a bark that echoes into the night sky and chills me.

"Yes, exactly. You want to have me. Own me. You and that Worthington girl. You don't see us as equals, and that's because we're not. Not in your eyes. You want me to follow you around like a lovesick puppy and pledge my life for yours. You want me to love you whatever your failings."

There is silence, and then there is speech.

"Can't you?"

"Miss Doyle," And he takes my hand, but I rip it from his grasp, "Miss Doyle-"

"It's Gemma! It's bloody Gemma, and you're just doing this to hurt me!"

His voice grows hard and cold. "Do you ever think of anyone but yourself, Miss. Doyle?"

"I hate you. There. That's thinking of someone else. I hate you." My voice is young and wavering, the tears turning my words clumsy yet delicate. Childlike. I am nothing more than a child.

"All right. All right, Miss Doyle. Now, dawn is almost upon us, and it would do horrors for your reputation if you were to be caught outdoors, half naked, in the middle of the woods with a gypsy. In the night."

"I care little about my reputation."

"But I do, Miss Doyle." he is silent and then speaks, and his words break a little part of me. "If I cannot be with you, I am going to make sure that someone is. I know what loneliness is, Miss Doyle, and I would not wish it even upon you."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Not even upon me? How dare he?

"Miss Doyle, do you really see a future? Really see us ever being together, happily?"

"Yes, of course. It's all I want."

"We would be penniless, exiled from all society. We would both have to work, we would never see each other, and if we were to have children, they would be frowned upon by everyone. We would be too Indian for England and too English for India. Do you understand? There is no place on the earth we could be."

"With the gypsies? What about them, or are you just conveniently forgetting that they have wordlessly accepted our relationship as easily as if I were ... were truly one of them."

"There is no 'truly' about it, Miss Doyle. Could you be happy, living most of your life near the school that you once attended, watching through branches as your old headmistress warned the younger girls about the danger of approaching the gypsies? As she told them the chilling tale of a girl, deluded by her fantasies, who ran off with a heathen? Even if you could stand that, I would not do it to the others. They would be targeted and victimised, and they are ... they are my family, Miss Doyle. Not my mother and my father, but family nonetheless."

"Kartik... we could go somewhere. There would be somewhere that would have us. Paris! It's a very bohemian city, according to Felicity."

"Yes, bohemian in that you can paint as much as you like there, and perhaps bohemian in that women under the influence of alcohol may become a little friendlier than usual and no one will inform the queen. Not bohemian enough for us. We are not bohemian. We are simply forbidden."

"That's not true." I say fiercely, but the dull tears of hateful truth slip down my face anyway. The salt in them makes the fresh wound sting and I hiss in pain. Kartik jumps.

"What is it, Miss Doyle?"

"The cut ... it hurts."

"Has it been cleaned at all?"

"Not really..." I bite my lip. Yes, the truth is that I haven't cleaned it, but if I tell him that, he will mock me and ridicule me for being so stupid.

"What does that mean?"

"No."

He hisses in exasperation through his teeth and inclines his head in the direction of the gypsy camp. "Come on, it could get infected."

"I'm quite alright, sir, really."

"Gemma, drop the sir. It's unbearable."

He called me Gemma, and it makes me smile. There is hope.