An hour; That's all Alec had given his ward to make something out of what had happened in her brand new flat. After she had finally found herself able to unfreeze from her confused state, she had walked toward the bed, dressed with sheets that reminded her of her once royal chambers, and sat down near that brand new black cloak to automatically scribble down her thoughts in the only place she felt safe to write them in: her journal. Something almost happened. Something I didn't exactly know I wanted to happen until it almost did... She'd written it all down, not that it had been much; with the strange way her mind went from completely confused to absolutely angry and humiliated, it had been a shock that she had even been able to scribble down any words at all.
Yet, at that moment, with her journal and shoulder bag neatly and carefully hidden in her brand new room, as she walked the somewhat long way to the garden to meet her strange guardian, all she could feel was confusion: why had Alec not kissed her? Had he not wanted to? Had he done it on purpose to simply humiliate her? The same three questions had clouded her mind for the previous fifty minutes, nearly in a loop. Still, as she stepped into the gardens, she couldn't help but wonder just how she should act toward her mentor. Which emotion should she choose to let herself display in that, their next session of training her to become the best guard she could be. "Alec?" She called in a voice that chose on its own to focus on the confusion of her own emotions; something that refused to last too long.
What Anne didn't know, was that mere seconds after he'd left the room Alec had been kicking himself in the ass. He realised, moments later, that it wasn't a strange thought for him to have a crush on Anne (or whatever his sentiments might be), but in that moment he had simply felt odd. He hadn't felt that way towards another being in so long that it felt truly foreign; so foreign, in fact, that he had pulled away from her before any single action could change everything between them both. He was her instructor, after all; could he truly expect himself to fall into the clichéd story of the mentor and his student? Lord, he did not know, but the pull toward his Queen was so strong, that for a moment, he didn't care. "Close your eyes." He simply requested as soon as he found the courage to do it, stepping out of the bushes he'd been standing behind until he could see her.
It was definitely an odd thing to ask of her, and of course it willed her brow to furrow in the smallest of gestures, even as she stood there, resting her hands, as they'd crossed, on the soft material of the long sleeves of her black lace dress (one of the few outfits that Heidi and her had actually agreed on); her eyes searched and observed her guardian in every way before she allowed herself to speak. "Are you going to attack me, or are you going to just leave me waiting here and go do something else, Greco?" The tone her voice had escaped in had been slightly colder than she'd actually meant it to; which only made a frown etch across her guardian's features as he noticed, in her tone, just how much he'd either hurt her or worse. Regardless of such, he watched as Anne, slipping into the role of the good student, complied and closed her eyes.
With his mind haunting him slightly as he dismissed her ice-like words, Alec stepped around her with a breath of unneeded air leaving his pursed lips. "Where where in the garden, there's an envelope." He stated, lifting his hands to tie up her loose locks with a hair tie that he had stolen from Heidi's room on his way to the garden; he didn't pay much mind to the way in which she tensed, or the way her hands balled into fists against her arms upon their cross, for the guilt had eaten at him enough. "Plain, licked shut. It's buried." Both his arms crossed to mirror her stance as he watched Anne's features for a moment. "Find it." He finished.
Of course it's a test. She thought as she stood with her eyes closed. She knew there were many things she wanted to say to Alec (if not spit at him), but instead of giving him another attitude to remember her for, she bit her tongue, literally, for about three seconds, to swallow all her words in a gulp. An envelope. She reminded herself, an envelope hidden in the garden and buried. She would be professional, she would forgo every single sentiment that wished to slip through raging brims and simply move without opening her eyes, as he so wisely requested; even her thoughts held rage upon the small betrayal he had cursed her with. Still, she willed her body to turn in the direction of her guardian's voice, moving towards the source of her problems, so to say, before lifting her hands to try and reach for his; she allowed her hands to touch Alec's crossed arms and follow them along until she could pull them in her direction; something that only made the guard's brow furrow with a curiosity that so easily explained itself the moment in which she hurried to take one of his hands toward her. With a raised brow and a somewhat amused smile, Alec watched as Anne felt the small particles of dirt upon his fingertips; he watched as the gentleness of her digits dared lift his hand until it rested close enough to her nose in order to smell the freshness of the dirt and his own scent along with that of the flowers he'd touched as he'd buried the paper upon his fingertips. It was no surprise that, for a second, a gentle wave if wishful thinking led him to believe that she had been about to kiss the back of his hand the way a gentleman did to a Lady upon countless movies of a so called period. He felt slightly uncomfortable and soon thereafter somewhat pathetic when, after a couple of seconds, Anne finally dropped his hand in an unceremonious means before turning around to face the garden again. And, just as suddenly as she had let go of his hand, she started moving forward, and Alec couldn't help the way his lips parted in a smirk to forgo his guilt and hurt, as his ward trailed away; only a second later he started following her. To say he was impressed was clearly an understatement.
Anne could feel him right behind her as she followed the scent of the freshly moved dirt; her hands had lowered from cross against her chest as she continued walking. She turned to the right, and to the left, following the scent as she would a visible clue if she had her eyes open; she could smell the dampness of a recent rain upon the garden, she could smell the nearly inexistent hint of cologne tainting the air in a small trail as she continued on, the wet grass under her heels, the residues of a smoke left there by one of the counted humans in the castle.
Suddenly, she stopped.
The gentle scent she had caught upon his hands and the soft hint of perfume had started fading away; and it was only such that willed her to turn about with her arms outstretched in front of her as to not crash against Alec (for she knew he was following), before even coming close to daring to move forward again until she could smell the scent once more. After a couple of steps and a turn to the left, she felt the corner of a large flower pot crashing against her lower leg; so she knelt slowly, with her arms in front of her still, until she could feel the soft little buds of a flower from which petals dared adorn the dirt from whence it came from. It was dying, the flower, as would any summer bud in the first echoes of winter; she could feel freshness of the dirt on her fingers once she forced herself to go on. Easily, the once-Queen rummaged around the dirt, avoiding damaging any flower her fingers touched, until, finally the distinctive smooth corner of what was definitely paper, grazed against her fingertips. Only in satisfaction did she dare allow her smile a widening place against her lips as she pulled the dirt-coated white envelope from the pot and forced herself to stand tall before her mentor; after only a couple of sends, she finally opened her eyes. "Hm." She said, clearly satisfied with herself as she moved the little envelope from side to side with only the tips of her fingers.
"Open it." Alec encouraged, as he looked at her with a pair of very proud crimson optics. His arms remained upon their crossed position, and he couldn't exactly decide whether he liked the quite cliche'd feeling of a bunch of butterflies fluttering around his stomach like a teenager boy again or not.
Anne's brow rose as her hands busied themselves in opening the envelope carefully after dusting it off of the dirt as much as she could; she allowed her eyes the freedom of focusing only on what she was doing, lest she let Alec know just how curious she actually was upon the outcome of the situation. After a couple of seconds, the contents finally became exposed; she didn't exactly know what she'd been expecting to find, but it definitely wasn't what she found. Resting cleanly inside the envelope, a thin piece of paper waited with a sole word hand-printed across its surface in handwriting much neater than what she would have expected from what she thought to be a teenage-looking boy: Dinner. And with the same sense of confusion she'd stepped into the garden with, only accompanied by a rather questioning glance, she dared look up toward a smiling Alec.
"Get it with me?" He asked as his brow twitched; he knew what he'd just done hadn't been very smooth; that perhaps his actions at the present didn't exactly make up for the ones within her room, but it had been the best he'd been able to come up with in just an hour. It was no surprise that there were gentle nerves pressing his unbeating heart, and making the top of his stomach hurt, as his eyes traced over her own still bewildered features.
Anne's eyes searched Alec's as her fingers played with the corners of the envelope she'd just searched for; she had to admit that the entire situation was odd, regardless of if she realised that she'd been wrong. Her search for the envelope, as much as the word inside it, stopped looking at all like another test; instead, it looked to her as if maybe Alec had genuinely felt bad for just leaving her like he'd done earlier. Admittedly, she was purposely torturing Alec with the amount of time she was taking to reply; after all, he had hurt her, humiliated her in a way that seemed to not be his end. But then, after what felt like entirely too long for both vampires, getting her thoughts in order, she decided to speak her true question. "Are you courting me, Alec?" Her eyes never stopped looking into her guardian's own even as she minutely made the corner of the paper hit against her palm repeatedly with a soft rhythm.
It was no wonder the boy's lips pursed slightly as his gaze veered off to look at a tree at the corner of the garden; once again, her choice of words stoke him as odd, as entirely too outdated regardless of the means in which he knew his ward had lived as a human within the change of time for centuries. Then again, if there was anything Alec knew, especially after becoming the once-Queen's mentor, it was that some things, when ignored for entirely too long of a time, could be hard to let go of; like, for example, the habit of courtship when not one other romantic venture had crossed through their lives. Something that was easy to say for him, but he couldn't believe of her. "I guess I am..." He started, "I mean; I'm more-or-less asking you out, for all intents and purposes of the modern world." His crimson orbs moved back to rest on her as he allowed a shoulder to shrug idly. "Which, technically, is not exactly the same thing as it would have meant a courtship 500 years ago," he admitted, "but it does stand along the same premise." A light chuckle made its way past his lips before his head ducked slightly.
Anne's movements mirrored his as she looked down to stare at the lonely word on the sheet of paper in her hands once again as a kind wide grin lifted the corners of her lips upon his timely explanation; she noted his carefulness, his well thought means of making things clear for her, but she also could not, for the life of her, let go of his and her own cowardice upon the promise of a kiss. It seemed that, even after centuries of living family life after family life (brought forth only for the reality of her own continued hiding state in the face of others), her pride still held strong; it was a gentle fight within her heart and mind: to give in, or to act upon her pride, for there was something burning in her heart, in her stomach, that, much like the moment the two had shared in the confines of her new chambers, pulled her forward in his direction like a magnet hungry for its mate. She wanted to stand her ground, to make him have to beg for her, to make him work for the possibility of her affections, but it seemed, for her, that it was entirely too late. She didn't know how, or why, or whether it was nothing but the spark of a moment's notice, but her still heart scorched with longing for the touch of his gentle hands, her lips wished to taste his, and such infatuation that she had not at all been willing to acknowledge that very morning, felt stronger than it even had within that almost-kiss; it was too late. For her, anyways. "Okay." She finally stated, holding the couple of previous moments of silence close to her heart; something that only invited her to finally look up at him before once before nodding her head in affirmation. "Yes, I will have dinner with you." This time, she didn't try to hold back the smile that lifted at the corners of her lips. "But you must still make up for before; I won't forgive and forget that easily." Even so, the lightness of her smile contradicted her words.
It had been entirely too long for the guard, but he expected no less; his head lifted to glance at his ward; his grin resurfaced onto his lips in a retaliating fashion, and the nervousness he'd been feeling before, I'm nervous?, slipped away. "Sounds reasonable to me." He admitted, as much playing her game as admitting to the reality of his fault. "After training, then." His grin instantly faded and was replaced with a smirk; that same smirk that had learnt to find a way into the once-Queen's heart. Something that would have truly been enough to make the woman feel weak at the knees, but only complemented itself by the few steps he took in her direction; only with the means of leaning down slightly so soft words could escape in gentle note against her ear. "You didn't think I'd let you out of that, now, did you?"
Anne's insides seemed to slowly become filled with an overwhelming wave of emotion, and her eyes lowered to look at the sheet of paper upon her hands again as her guardian's words sank in completely; it all seemed to be enough for her to realise what all of it meant. Not the fact that they'd train, she'd already known that, but the rest; the fact that not only had he made advances on her that she very much welcomed, but that the infatuation was there at all. The way her body responded to the plethora of emotions that nearly drowned her, reminded her deeply of a long lost love; it reminded her of a gentle touch, a soft voice, a kind man, and the way she had felt once he had declared his love for her: Henry Percy, the only man to truly hold her heart completely upon her human years. It had been years and years ago, and after the debacle with her King, she truly had never thought she'd ever feel that way again; like a young woman with a wholehearted infatuation of a child upon her first love. Nonetheless, disregarding the overwhelmed means of her own heart, she lifted her eyes to meet Alec's own to speak a truth as innocent and clueless as she actually felt. "Wishful thinking, Greco." She admitted. "Wishful thinking." Her lips mirrored her guardian's smile as a shoulder lifted in a smug shrug.
To Be Continued.