When I arrived at the track the next morning, Dimitri was there in the stands, reading his book and he had quickly barked out that he wanted me to do thirty laps. After I finished the running, I walked over to him. "Hey," I said, "I'm done now. Now what, Comrade?"
Dimitri got up, carrying his book with him, and started to exit the track area. "After you're done here, Guardian Bondar has agreed to help out with some of your training," he said, with his back to me, "He will be meeting you in the weight room for your lifting session this morning. He should be there now."
-=o0/&\0o=-
When I arrived in the weight room, I found Yuri there waiting for me. "Hey, Yur - I mean Guardian Bondar," I said to him, "I heard you're going to help train me. Where do you want me to start?"
"Rose, 'Yuri' is fine. You're close enough to graduation and we fought shoulder-to-shoulder in the caves on Sunday. And I know you've been pretty ... close ... with Dimitri," he said. The way he said it left me to believe he had an idea of what had happened. "He gave me all of the details of your previous training and left a pretty detailed schedule on what he'd planned to go over with you. Can you start out at the bench press?"
"Yeah," I nodded, as I headed over to load up the bar and get situated on the rack, "How many reps?"
As I positioned my hands on the bar, Yuri said, "Four sets of ten. Is it okay if we talk - well, mostly me talking and you listening - while you lift?"
"Okay," I said, as I lifted the bar.
"I don't know what's up with you and Dimitri as of last night," he began, getting in place to spot me, "but I have seen enough to know that there's something there. More than just mentoring. Hell, I told him last week, it's really no surprise considering how much time you spent together."
"What?!" I growled angrily, as I mentally counted out the first ten of my lifts and set the bar down, "And you thought you'd start trying to get me to fool around with you, now that he and I aren't on such great terms?"
"Not even close, little girl," he said, almost a little condescendingly, "I don't swing that way. Quite frankly, if I had to pick anyone around St. Vlad's that I'd want to be fooling around with, I'd be much more interested in the person who practically begged me to replace him this morning than a novice almost fifteen years younger than me that he's afraid to be alone with right now."
"Ooookay, then!" I said, stretching my arms as I prepared for my next set, "So, what did you want, then?"
"Something's up with you two," he said. "I don't know what it is, but the man is hurting. And I think you better fix it."
"Why me?" I asked.
He replied, "Because you broke it."
"Can I trust you? To keep things to yourself?"
"Yours wouldn't be the first guardian romance I've kept a secret," he offered.
"How much do you know?"
Yuri began, "He's been treating you differently than all of the other students on campus, for months now. Dimitri's whole personality has changed since he started training with you. When we were on the plane back from the Dashkov trial, I don't know if you even realized he was there, he was holding you and brushing your hair back. Thankfully, I think I was the only one there who saw him kiss your temple on the plane - and the only one at Spokane who spoke Russian well enough to understand what he was saying when he told you, 'Thank God you're alive. I thought I lost you,' when you were in shock after we found you. He might as well have just come out and said that he loved you."
"It wasn't real!" I spat back as I finished my next set, "He didn't love me. He was just using me. And that has stopped now."
"You really think that? Just last week, I told him that if he was willing to take a court job, he might be able to stay with you and be together. You know what he told me? He told me on Wednesday that he put in transfer paperwork, but figured it probably meant taking a desk job to get it to go through. You really think he wants that desk job? You really think that he doesn't love you?" he asked.
I replied simply, "Yes," as I went for the bar to do my next set. His words seemed so true, and something about them pulled on my heart in ways I didn't want to understand, but the voice in the back of my head kept saying, The feelings you thought you and Dimitri had weren't real. You were mistaken. It was all a mistake.
"Well, I don't." Yuri was quiet for a moment, then said, "But he wanted you to be trained and felt like he wasn't the right one to do it all right now. So, until you two can work it out, until he feels like he's ready for you to deal with it, or until you graduate, I'm gonna be here. For your weight training, your sparring, and your martial arts. I don't have a problem with being your friend as well as your mentor, but keep in mind that I'm mostly doing this for him - not you. And don't think this comes without compromise from him, either - Dimitri offered to take an extra hour and a half of gate guard duty from me for every hour I train you."
-=o0/&\0o=-
The ceremony that afternoon was scheduled for three o'clock. I had told Adrian during our time together after lunch that I would probably need some time before the ceremony to prepare beforehand, and left him rather quickly. When it was time to go, Adrian walked me to my dorm, then looked me in the eye at the doors and said, "Rose, you're dying to kiss me right now." I was dying to kiss him, but I didn't know it until he told me. Adrian leaned down and our lips met, his arms around my waist and pulling me flush to his body, hands coming to rest on my butt cheeks.
I pulled away, blushing, but his hands were still on my ass. "I thought we weren't going to be so public about our displays of affection," I said, seeing several novices pass by us entering the dorm, eyes practically popped out of their heads as they tried to gawk at the two of us making out.
"I know," he said, "but you're just so delectable, little dhampir. I just can't help but want to kiss you. And touch you." On the word 'touch', he gave my ass a little squeeze.
"But what if Tatiana finds outs? She could prevent me from being a guardian, entirely. I'm not ready to deal with that."
He said, eyes closed and face pressed up to mine, gently rubbing his nose to mine, "Oh, Rose, I already told you that you worry too much. Just let it go."
"I can't. If I don't get to be a personal guardian, I might never get to see you, either. Would you care then?"
Adrian smirked, "Damnit, I hate it when my girlfriend has a good point I can't dispute that means we have to be apart for a while." He removed his hands from my body and moved a step back from me.
I smiled. "Girlfriend?" I asked.
"Isn't that what we are now?" he replied.
I looked around and waited for a few more novices to pass by the door, then gave him a quick peck on the lips, saying, "I guess we are."
-=o0/&\0o=-
I sat in the chair with my hair pulled aside as best as I could. Some of the strands had caught in the clasp at the back of my healing necklace, which I hadn't taken off in over twenty-four hours. I prepared for the sting of the needle. As Lionel, the resident guardian tattoo artist, came to stand behind me, he said, "Novice Hathaway, you'll have to take off that necklace. I can't get in to a good spot to put your battle mark while you're wearing it."
It took me a few minutes to untangle it from my hair, then I unfastened the clasp and dropped the necklace into my pocket, and saw Dimitri sitting in the chair beside mine. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, all of the voices in my head talking to me about Dimitri and Adrian were silent - not just quiet, but completely gone. All of the confusion I had felt, all of the mass of seething emotions I had been feeling and dealing with, told me one thing: I loved Dimitri. As Lionel added the new mark to my neck, I sat mulling over the past day, with frightening clarity. Dimitri loved me. We had been together. I had let him go. I had kissed Adrian. My world was spinning.
As soon as Lionel put the finishing touch on my zvezda mark and told me to get up, I stood, and looked up to see Dimitri standing from his chair. His chocolate brown eyes met mine. In front of all of those people, I couldn't say anything, and couldn't do much, but I prayed that my eyes would convey to him all of the regret, sadness, longing, despair, desire, and love that I was feeling when I looked at him. I heard his breath catch for a minute as he looked at me. As we both walked off to the side, I grasped his hand for just a moment, giving him a gentle squeeze. I hoped there would be time to talk to him before he left.
Not that these things were intended to be a celebration or anything, but for the second marking ceremony in a row, I found myself unable to enjoy the food. This time around, they'd made some kind of peanut butter chocolate pie that normally would've looked incredibly delicious, but I could hardly stand to take a bite of it. I left my plate on the table when I noticed Dimitri sitting alone at a table in the far corner of the room and walked to sit beside him. "Can we talk, please?" I asked him, reaching for his hand as he started preparing to stand and walk away.
"What is it?" he asked, voice deep, both demanding and somber.
I didn't know how to say what I needed to say - or even what I needed to say. I sat there, wide-eyed as I tried to gather my thoughts. "I don't know," I said, honestly.
"That's what I thought, Rose," he said.
As I tried not to raise my voice, I cried, "Wait! Please - just, please!" I felt tears threatening to fall and I pushed them back, but I knew he could see it in my eyes. "I don't know why, but I thought you were just using me for my body. I was afraid and confused. I realize now that I was wrong."
"Aren't you with Adrian Ivashkov now?" he asked.
"Yes, but - " I began, before he cut me off.
"Didn't I see you kissing him last night? Didn't I see him putting his hands on you in front of your dorm this afternoon? You can't just turn your feelings - or my feelings - on and off whenever it's convenient for you."
My brain couldn't even begin to reconcile what he was saying, even though I knew it to be true. How had this happened? "But I don't love him," I said, "I love you."
"It's too late for that, Rose. I should've known better. You were too young, but with all that you'd gone through, I couldn't see just how little you knew yourself and your own heart. You don't love me. You don't know what it's like to love someone. And even if I can't stop loving you, I can't let myself love you."
"Wait, Dimitri, please!" I was practically begging - no, I was begging, "I don't know what's going on, but I feel like I haven't been myself for the past day. Please can't we just have some time to talk about this? Could you run with me again this afternoon, and talk?"
"I'm cancelling your running this afternoon. Go be with Adrian," he said to me. Dimitri got up from the table, and walked to the trash, throwing away his pie.
One of the tears trickled out of my eye, I reached into my pocket to grab the healing charm, hoping it would help with emotional pain, too. To my relief, it did, as the voices that gave rise to my doubt about Dimitri came back, letting me know I had made the right choice to not let him hurt me anymore. I was wrong about our feelings for each other. I was mistaken. It was a mistake.
He was playing with my heart. And he wouldn't do it anymore.
I saw Dimitri exit the room as I clasped my healing necklace back around my neck.
-=o0/&\0o=-
After I left the reception, I sought out Lissa through the bond. To my relief, there weren't many other people with them, and she was with Adrian in the common room of her dorm, practicing spirit again. I headed over to the dorm to join them.
Although dresses or skirts weren't really going to work when you're sitting on a stool facing the whole room, we were always encouraged to dress up for a molnija ceremony, so I was wearing a pair of slacks with a dressy v-necked satin blouse. When I arrived in the common room, Adrian let out a low whistle. "Little dhampir, it was worth it to let you go early. You look like you came straight out of my dreams," he said, then came close and put his arm around me, then whispered, quiet enough that I was sure Lissa could still hear, but that hopefully the other Moroi in the room couldn't, "Though in my dreams, I'd probably end up with that shirt on the floor. We'll have to see about smuggling you into my room and getting that off of you." I blushed and tried to pretend like the others in the room couldn't hear me.
Adrian looked at each of the other four Moroi in the room and individually asked them to leave the room now. I could see from their glossed-over stares that he was using compulsion on all of them. After they had all gotten up and left, Adrian said, "Now that that's done ..." and gave me a passionate, deep kiss on the lips, taking long enough that Lissa coughed a reminder that she was still in the room.
You're dating Adrian now? Lissa asked me through the bond, after he released the kiss. I smiled and shrugged. Rose, this isn't like you.
"Have you given any more thought about your birthday?" Adrian asked me.
"What about your birthday, Rose?" asked Lissa.
"Oh," I tried to breeze by the fact that she couldn't come, "Adrian asked me if I wanted him to arrange for him to take me off-campus for my birthday next Sunday."
He asked again, "Will you? Please?"
I hedged, "Tatiana won't find out about it, right? And people won't be talking all about it later?"
Adrian offered, "If that's what you want, then I can keep the knowledge to as few people as possible."
"Am I going, too?" Lissa asked, brightening a little. This might've been the first time, ever, that I'd been offered the chance to go off-campus for something that wasn't a school activity without Lissa.
I frowned. "Sorry, Liss ..." I said, "Adrian just didn't think that he'd be able to get approval to take you off-campus so soon after the attack. Especially without bringing Dimitri along. But otherwise, I'd really like you to go."
"I understand," she said, "Nice to see you wearing that healing cross, though. Adrian tried with a golden ring first. If it would've worked, it would've fit on your thumb, I think, but it didn't work out so well. That, and we figured you'd have to take it off while you were in the gym."
"Yeah," I agreed, "I probably couldn't lift weights with a gold ring on my thumb."
Adrian interrupted, "Ladies, ladies, we're getting off-topic here from the really important stuff: Rose, are we going on your birthday?"
"I guess so, Adrian. Set it up," I said.
-=o0/&\0o=-
Author's Notes:
And ... I've finished another one, folks! Sorry about the bittersweet part with Dimitri there, but I promise better things are eventually ahead. It will probably get just a bit worse before it gets better, though, so I apologize in advance for that, but I promise that I will not leave Dimitri and Rose so broken and that they will end up together in this story! You're going to start to see the repercussions of Adrian's near-constant compulsion on Rose and what is quickly becoming his obsession with her soon. Also, I hope you liked that little vignet with Yuri in the weight room and we'll be seeing more of him. Gigi256 really brought him to life in her works - I know, I know, I keep mentioning her stories, but they are just so good - and it just seemed right to have a little more of this guy, especially since he survived the caves in this story.
Now, then, here's my question of the week (if you can call it that, considering I've posted two chapters in two days!): Other than Rose and Dimitri, who's your favorite Vampire Academy series character to read about?
I think my answer would have to be Adrian (after Dimitri and then Rose, in that order). I don't really like him as a person, per se, but to me, he just makes me think of some bad decisions that I wanted that I've (luckily) narrowly avoided, at least in any sense of finality.
