You, Me, and the shadow (Vampire academy fanfiction)

by sarahlovesVA

What's happening with Rose? She has never been what anyone deems as normal. But this is something else. This is something bigger. Rose and Dimitri must learn old family secrets and prophecies to try and prepare for whatever evil is coming. Getting over the attack on St Vlad's and saving Dimitri's life is just the beginning. Chapter rewrites in progress.

1. The start of it all

You, Me, and the shadow chapter one.

RPOV

Something's happening to me.

I can't exactly describe what I'm feeling. I just know that I feel like I'm changing. The only way I can think to describe it is how they explained evolution to us in science class. How it took thousands of years for the moroi and dhampir to become what we are today. How before this, we were different, but no one exactly knew how different.

It's like I can feel my body changing, my mind is expanding, and I don't know what to do.

So here's a little back story. I'm Rose. A dhampir, and for now, a novice at St Vlad's academy, or as I like to call it, Vampire Academy.

I'm turning eighteen in two days, and I was supposed to be graduating in two months, but that's not going to happen now, and I can't even bring myself to feel even a little sad about it.

A lot's happened in the last three years of my life since Lissa brought me back from the dead, and hardly any of it has been good. One wonderful thing that's happened though would be Dimitri.

Ah, Dimitri. My mentor, guide, best friend, and now boyfriend, though that term is too menial for what he is to me. He's my everything, my soulmate, my reason for existing.

We officially got together two weeks ago, but we've been unconditionally in love with each other since the second we laid eyes on the other; neither of us had any choice in the matter; it just happened.

He means absolutely everything to me, but two weeks ago, I nearly lost him.

There was an attack on St Vlad's, and it definitely didn't go well, but in all honesty, it could have gone so much worse.

The strigoi took several people to do God knows what with, to feed off them, to turn them, no one knew, but I couldn't stand by and just leave them to their fate. I fought against our leaders and managed to organise a rescue mission to save them.

I don't get why anyone listened to me, but they did. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I killed around seventy per cent of the attacking strigoi single-handed, but who knows.

I don't even remember most of the attack itself. It was like something inside me took over, and I completely blacked out. I only came to after it was over when I was already surrounded by over a hundred completely decimated strigoi bodies.

Dimitri's actually the one who found me, and thank god because if it was anyone else, they might have started asking some hard to answer questions. I can't really describe the look on his face when he saw me. It was like a mix between awe, pride, and love, but I also saw the fear in his eyes as well, a fear that was probably reflected in my own. It wasn't fear of me though; it was more like fear for me.

When we finally handed in our statements to Alberta after everything happened, he redacted the parts about him finding me with flames in my hands, among other things.

It was the rescue mission at the caves that made it worse though. We were fighting together, my back to his, and we were kicking ass, but then he was gone. Everyone else had already escaped making us the last ones in there just finishing up. I turned when I felt his presence behind me disappear, only to find Dimitri pinned to the wall by an ancient strigoi. I don't know what happened after seeing him like that until I woke up in his arms on the cave floor, but Dimitri explained everything to me later.

The Caves

DPOV

Roza and I are making our way to the entrance, fighting as we go.

We're currently fighting back to back, and I'm finding it hard to focus properly. I'm really concerned for my Roza. Something's going on with her, and I'm worried. I only just got her. I refuse to lose her now. Or ever.

As I take down the female strigoi in front of me, I suddenly feel like I've been hit by a truck from the side, causing all the air in my lungs to escape in a loud gasp, and then I'm being pinned to the cave wall behind Roza. This strigoi is clearly ancient, and he obviously took advantage of my distracted state.

He's holding me by my neck, trying to lift me up off of my feet, but the height of the cave mixed with my own size is stopping him. I'm trying to fight against him the best I can, but he quickly begins to lean forward to bite me, and I can't do anything except try to kick out because if I struggled too much, I know my neck would snap with the hold he has on me.

I'm focused on trying to escape when I hear a loud high pitched scream. It's so loud it stuns not only me but also the strigoi holding me.

I quickly glance over the strigoi shoulder while he turns his head to see what the disturbance is, only for us both to see my sweet, sweet Roza looking terrifying, shrouded in what I can only describe as black smoke or shadow. Her eyes are entirely black, but her hands are ablaze with a blue flame that I can tell even from here is burning hotter than the sun. Her hair's flowing behind her like a strong unfelt wind is hitting it.

What feels like the second I look at her, she's gone. She completely disappears. I would say in the blink of an eye, but I know I didn't blink. Then, the strigoi's thrown off me by some unseen force, not even a second later. He screams as if whatever throws him off of me caused him vast amounts of pain. When he hits the opposite side of the cave wall, the impact is so hard that the stone cracks under the force of it.

I'm frozen in place in complete and utter shock. I know that all of this has only taken around three seconds, but it feels like hours.

Then she's there, standing right in front of me with her back to me, facing the strigoi. It's like she's guarding me. I can feel the power radiating off of her as she charges at the strigoi with a speed I've never seen, and within a millisecond, he's dead, his body reduced to ash on the floor.

I'm just standing there staring at her, my jaw on the floor, watching her as she slowly turns around, extinguishing the flames as she does, she reaches her hand out for me, and all I hear is a whispered, "Comrade," before she collapses to the hard ground under us.

When I watch her drop, I immediately feel my legs again, so I run as fast as I can to try and catch her before she hits the ground. The black shadows disappeared at the same time as the flames, and she looks just like my Roza again. The same Roza I held in my arms in the cabin less than twenty-four hours ago, the same Roza I fell in love with the first time I saw her. Although now, she's completely out cold.

Cradling her in my arms, I look down on her beautiful face and will her to wake up. "Roza. Detka. Wake up. Please, Milaya." Gently shaking her to raise her from her unconscious state, it takes a minute, but then I see her eyes begin to open slowly.

When they do, she's looking at me with those gorgeous brown eyes of hers like she's waking up from a dream. She looks at me for a second before I see panic hit her. Quickly running her hand over my face, she rushes out, "OH MY GOD, Dimitri. What happened? Are you OK? Where did he go? How did I get here?"

I know I have to stop her and try to calm her down because she's making herself hysterical, although I do understand the feeling because I don't know what just happened either.

"Roza, try to calm down, My Love. Try to breathe for me." As soon as she hears my voice, her body loses a lot of its tension, and she takes some deep breaths. "Good, Milaya, good. Now, what do you remember? What's the last thing you saw?"

I watch as she narrows her eyes, a frown appearing between her brow as she tries to think. "I saw you. You were pinned to the wall. I remember screaming because I thought I was going to lose you, and then I don't know what happened. It's like something took over me. I don't remember anything after that. Then I woke up here. Why what happened?"

I look her over, and I know she's telling me the truth, not that I doubt her anyway, but the look of pure confusion and worry tells me everything.

I quickly tell her what happened during the last few minutes, but she just starts to panic even more as a look of trepidation appears on her face. "What's happening to me, Dimitri?" She cries, so I just pull her closer to my chest and hold her tighter than I already was because I don't have an answer for her. "Do you think it might be something to do with the darkness?" I hear her mumble into my shoulder as she shudders under me.

Shit. I hadn't thought of that. "I don't know, Milaya. All I do know is that you looked just like you did when I found you after the attack a few hours ago. We'll figure this out though, I promise, but we can't tell anybody else yet, OK, Detka? We need to keep this between us until we know what's causing this."

I feel her nod her head against the fabric of my top before she pulls away slightly and looks up into my eyes, and I know I have to say the thing I've wanted to since she pulled the strigoi off of me. "Thank you though, Roza. Thank you so much for saving me." I don't even give her a chance to respond before I surge forward and catch her lips with my own, kissing her hard, trying to convey the amount of gratitude and love I feel for her.

I feel her hand find its way into my hair as I hear her moan deeply into my mouth, causing me to deepen the kiss even further. Our bodies work like some kind of instinct kicks in. Like we have been doing this all our lives.

This is everything I have always wanted. She's everything I've always wanted, and no matter what, I refuse to live without her now. I don't even think I could.

Present

RPOV

When we were kissing on the floor, my mother decided to make her presence known. She froze when she saw us, but surprisingly her first instinct was to make sure that I was Ok when she saw Dimitri holding me in his arms. She did make it clear that we would be discussing the kiss later, but for that moment, she left it.

That was two weeks ago, and since then, I've felt different. I've felt a change in me as each day goes by.

The day after the caves happened, I was in the gym with Dimitri using the punching bag, and I hit it so hard it snapped the chain, causing the bag to fly halfway across the gym, bursting into flames when it landed. Dimitri quickly put it out and got rid of it so no one would know.

A few days after that, I was running late to meet up with him, like always, but I was running later than usual this time. I was picturing Dimitri with that exasperated expression on his face, then I felt a hot rush run through my veins as I ran, and without even realising it, I was suddenly standing in front of him at the doors to the gym.

I don't know how I got there because not even a millisecond before, I was still in the dhampir dorms, but here I was, watching Dimitri jump at the sight of me whilst releasing a noise that was far too high pitched for a man of his size as he falls over onto his fine ass. It was funny as hell, but still, I don't know how I did it, and I told him the same thing when he asked.

Since then, he's been upping my workouts and laps, trying to see if we noticed any other changes, and we soon did.

My general lap time has improved by about three hundred per cent, and that's when I'm not even trying. My stamina's improved as well, making me able to run for longer and longer each day before I even break a sweat.

The amount I can bench has gone up too, and every time I hit a new goal, Dimitri grabs me and gives me an earth-shattering kiss, so there were definitely bonuses to all the extra work, even though we still don't understand why it's happening.

The only thing is, Dimitri seems to have been improving too, and we can't figure out why. I mean, some of the things happening to me could be attributed to my shadow kissed state or something of the like. But Dimitri's? Who knows.

We haven't been able to figure anything out yet, even though we've been spending every spare moment scouring the library searching for any clue as to the cause of my changes. Although It has been relatively easy to sneak around with the academy lockdown in place, we've been taking good advantage of that in even better ways though.

What we have managed to find so far during our search has been nothing short of shocking. Thankfully, there's a lot of information about Anna, St Vladimir's shadow kissed guardian. It explains some things, such as a possible enhanced speed and stamina, as well as a possible explanation for my newfound aptitude for theory and strategy. Still, there's absolutely nothing in any of those damn books about changing forms or having powers of any kind. So we still don't know what's really happening.

But I digress. As I said, I turn eighteen in two days. Well, more like thirty-four hours now, not like I'm counting or anything. We've been doing a lot of talking over the last two weeks, and we've come up with a plan. A plan that will change the course of our lives forever.

We know that we could never live without each other, but there are too many unknowns about whether or not we would be allowed to stay together here. Not only that, but now my relationship with Liss has taken a dive off shits creek.

After everything that happened before the attack, with me taking her darkness and attacking Jesse and everything, I went to see her after we got back from the caves. I wanted to talk to her about everything that's been going on or try to at least, but she basically told me to fuck off and do my job. When I inquired what she deemed my job to be, she just said. "You're a dhampir, you idiot. Go do what dhampir are supposed to do and die killing strigoi. Because God forbid you ever actually manage to kill another one. Those two you killed before were just dumb luck, and you even fucked that up by getting Mason killed."

I will admit, her saying that hurt like hell, but obviously, she wasn't aware of my part in the attack or subsequent rescue mission. Still, after that, I knew that our relationship was done. Even if it was just the darkness talking, and even if she did say sorry, I'm still done.

The darkness doesn't put the words there; It just makes you say what you already secretly think anyway. I should know I've done it enough.

So, Dimitri and I have decided to leave.

We're leaving at one minute past midnight on my eighteenth birthday, and we don't plan on looking back.

We discussed everything with my mum after the caves as well, and surprisingly she understood. She said that after everything she saw me do during the attack and because of how many strigoi I managed to kill single-handedly, that in her eyes, I was already a fully qualified guardian. And that means that she already sees me as an adult who could make her own choices.

That's when she decided to tell me about my father. My royal father. Prince Ibrahim Josiah Mazur Badica has apparently been keeping tabs on me since I was born, but due to some unsavoury business rivals as well as other reasons they have yet to tell me, he chose to stay anonymous until I was strong enough to protect myself, hence why my mother told me now.

Apparently, they stayed together and have been in a secret relationship my whole life, and she stayed away from me because his enemies were watching her. They said they wanted to keep me safe, which is nice to hear after thinking I was alone for twelve years.

My mum also apologised for what happened over the Christmas break, but she did say that she blacked out and didn't actually remember hitting me or even planning on doing it, but after further discussion, it turns out she remembers Tasha approaching her just before she entered the gym and then there is no memory until she saw me laying on the floor unconscious.

So it turns out that Tasha clearly compelled my mum to hurt me. Just another reason added to the pile for why I hate that bitch. But I will have to deal with that later. I have bigger things to worry about right now.

Because finding out about my dad was a huge thing.

Apparently, I'm actually next in line for the throne. I mean, what the actual fuck, right?

The Badicas happen to be a royal family that acknowledges and accept their dhampir relatives, and with me being the eldest female in line, it means I will be Queen someday. Apparently, there's more that goes into it that Abe will tell me later, but yeah. I'll be Queen. So that will be fun to explain to people when the time comes.

I've managed to speak to Abe three times over the last two weeks, and it has gone surprisingly well, to say the least. He even arranged for a plane to fly Dimitri and me out to Russia in thirty-six hours. We'll be staying in one of his estates there, which is where I'll be meeting him in person because he said he needs to discuss something important with us. I don't know what it could be about, but if going to Russia means that Dimitri can go home, then that's what we will do. My home is wherever he is now anyway. Dimitri is beyond happy though, and that makes me happy.

Yesterday, he told me that he couldn't wait to introduce his future bride to his family, and to say I was a blushing mess would be an understatement. He's so eagerly planning our future already, and we've only been official for two weeks. But in truth, I wouldn't have it any other way because I've been making future plans of my own.

Huh. Speak of the devil, and he shall appear. I've been so caught up in my own thoughts that I didn't even realise Dimitri was approaching me until I heard his beautiful voice. "Roza. How are you, Milaya Moya?"

I can feel the smile immediately fill my face, so I quickly look up only to see him walking towards me, the sun rising through the trees behind him as I sit on the bench outside the chapel. He looks like a fucking angel, and he's all mine.

Standing up as soon as he was within arm's reach, I quickly wrap myself around him and lean up for a kiss.

I'm not worried about being seen; most of the campus went home for another week so that the school could rebuild. Plus, It's daytime anyway, so there's no one around.

Pulling back once we both need air, I look up into his eyes and release a contented sigh. "I'm great, Babe. How are you? Have you just finished your shift?"

Keeping me within his arms, I feel his hand brush against my cheek as we continue to look at each other.

I don't know if this is normal for people in love, but every time we are apart, I feel like I'm missing a part of myself, so then when he comes back to me, it's like finally being able to breathe again.

"Yeah, I just finished. Everything's quiet out by the wards so you can relax. Are you ready for bed? There's only hours left now before our life really begins." He grins down at me as I feel his arms tighten around my waist.

He's practically vibrating with excitement. He has been for five days now, ever since the plans were finalised. All the other guardians think he lost his mind in the caves, but that's just because they've never seen him smile like this.

Returning his grin with one of my own, I pull him closer to me. "I can't wait, Comrade. Did you finish packing up your room this morning? Today was the deadline. I managed to finish mine whilst you were on your rounds."

"Yeah. All done. I sent off the boxes to Alberta with the address that Abe gave us clearly marked. They should arrive just before we do on Friday." He informs, pulling further away, causing me to whimper slightly at the loss of his body against mine, but he makes up for it by immediately taking my hand within his and easing me in the direction of the dhampir dorms.

He's been staying in my room since the caves because, after everything that happened, we didn't really see any point in staying apart anymore. Plus, neither of us could relax the one time we did try sleeping separately, so we ended up giving up after an hour.

"Yeah, I sent mine off with Alberta an hour ago as well, so they'll probably get shipped together," I remark casually as we walk, avoiding all windows and cameras as we do because you can never be too careful. "I can't wait to get away from this place. I want to be free Comrade. Free to be with you, doing whatever we want to do with no fear of being seen. I want to live our life the way we want to live it, at least until I'm required at court."

"We will, Milaya. I promise. In just over twenty-four hours, our lives will be our own. I will be able to hold your hand in public, and I will be able to kiss you whenever I feel like it, and no one will be able to stop me." He brings up our conjoined hands to his mouth and gently lays a kiss on the back of mine, which causes me to smile uncontrollably, but I don't say anything because I really don't need to. He knows how I feel.

We soon reach my dorm room, where he quickly opens the door for me, allowing me to enter first. Always the gentleman.

As soon as we get inside and the door's shut though, he's on me.

I feel his arms wrap around my waist from behind, pulling my back flush against his chest, his lips finding purchase on my neck where he begins to kiss me softly.

I can't help tilting my head to the side to give him a better angle as his lips move lower down my jawline until they hit the place that turns me into a mewling wreck, and as soon as I release my first moan, he knows he has me.

He quickly turns me around until I'm facing him as he whispers, "I can't wait to experience the world with you, Detka." His eyes are wide and dilated and beautiful as he looks at me as if I'm the most divine creature on the planet. "I can't wait to show you where I grew up." I watch as he leans his head lower, his luscious lips now only a breath away from mine. "I can't wait to ask you to be mine." His mouth meets my own in the type of deep kiss that makes your knees weak and your mind fuzzy.

Pulling away to catch my breath when I start to see stars, I let my eyes gaze up into his, and I say the one thing my heart believes completely. "I already am yours, Dimitri. You have everything, my heart, my body, my very soul. What else could I possibly have?"

He looks at me with pride, happiness and determination as he declares, "You can have my name, Milaya." His forehead meets mine as I close my eyes in an attempt not to cry. "When you're ready, I will turn you into Mrs Rosemarie Belikova."

I feel the tear run down my cheek, and I can't help myself. He really has no idea what him saying that does to me, so I decide to show him.

I surge forward and attack his lips with my own in a fierce kiss that causes him to release a gasp of surprise. He quickly gets over the shock though, as he lifts me off the ground with ease. I instinctively wrap my legs tightly around his waist and my arms around his neck.

I force myself to pull back for a moment because I have to tell him. He has to know.

"I'm ready now, Comrade. But when you do ask, my answer will always be yes." I then remember something which causes me to chuckle slightly. "Just make sure you do it in front of your mama. She'd kill you if she weren't there." After having only two conversations with her, I knew that much. You don't mess with a Belikova woman.

He lets out a breathy laugh, giving a fake shudder before he says, "Well, we can't have that now, can we?" Before he goes back to kissing me, carrying me towards the bed with a purpose. And let's just say, the extra stamina we both seem to have now definitely has its benefits.

Translations

Detka - baby

Milaya Moya - my dearest/Honey