A/N: Chapter 10! Woohoo! 19 Reviews! I wasn't planning on writing again until after Christmas, but I just couldn't help myself, and since I quite liked little Deryn, I decided to bring her back and write a sequel to it! Thanks to Amirin for suggesting it. Remember to Review!
Alek looked down at Deryn, trying to achieve a level of condescension. She sat across from him at the dinner table, her hands on her lap, invisible under the wood surface, and her head was tilted down in shame.
"What were you thinking?" Alek asked his granddaughter quietly. He was never the sort of person to shout or yell, that had been his wife's job.
"I dunno." She mumbled, shrugging slightly.
"Did you honestly think that you would be able to sneak in a boy into this apartment without my noticing?" He asked. It wasn't as if he could really blame Deryn or the unnamed boy. They were teenagers, after all, and teenagers loved to break rules and test breaking points.
"No." She said, bringing her bright blue eyes up to meet Alek's. His heart suddenly clenched. Deryn looked so much like her grandmother sometimes. "Maybe. I guess so? I don't know what I was thinking." She brought her arms up onto the table and let her head down upon them.
Alek sighed and laid his hand on her arm. "I know you weren't thinking. I never thought when I was your age." Deryn looked up at him, letting her arms down on the table. Alek grasped her slender hand in his. "I'm not going to give you rules because I trust that you're going to make the right decision. But I need you to trust me too."
"I do trust you, grandda." She assured him, and he could see her eyes glazing over with premature tears.
"Then I need you to tell me where you are, and whether you're going to bring friends home. I don't mind that you have boyfriends, Deryn. But I need you to be careful and talk to me."
"I want to be careful, but I don't think when I'm around him. I'm just all giggly and girly, just all 'round not myself."
Alek chuckled at his granddaughter's perfect explanation. "You might look exactly like your grandmother, but you are still so much like me." He told her, her eyebrows cocked up in confusion. It seemed that, to teenagers, the idea that adults could have love lives and romance was simply inconceivable.
"How so?" she asked, voice lilting at the end.
"I could never talk to your grandmother without getting my tongue tied in knots." He said. "Especially about things like love and feelings. I was useless really."
Deryn attempted to stifle a laugh, but it ended coming out even louder than it normally would have, causing air, and a few stray sprays of spit, to catapult out of her mouth. "You?" She guffawed, her face scrunching up hysterically. "YOU?"
"I know it may seem strange—"
"Strange?" she asked, getting a hold of herself. "You're the one who knows what to say, when to say it, and how to say it! I can't even imagine you getting tongue tied."
He smiled. "I told you it would seem strange, but it's true." He looked down at his hands, focusing on his wedding ring. Alek had never been able to take it off; the skin of his finger had just grown around it, making it a part of him. "Your grandmother had to wrestle a marriage proposal out of me. I was so nervous that I just couldn't find the words to complete the sentence." He remembered her on the London Bridge, wind blowing through her hair, which she had grown out for a mission. He remembered her kneeling down to face him, holding his hands and whispering: Just breathe, dummkopf. Breathe, think of what you want to say, and then talk. "She would always tell me to breathe, think, and then start talking."
"Gran said that to me too." Deryn looked into his eyes. "Every time I couldn't say something, that's what she would tell me to do just that."
"I miss her terribly, liebe." He told her. It wasn't often that he said this, and he did not tell many people.
"I miss her do, grandda." She said, reaching to grab his hand with hers. All of the sudden, her eyes furrowed, and then raised in alarm. "You're not going to tell Da, right?"
A/N: REMEMBER TO REVIEW!