A/N: Hey there, everybody. I know it's been a long time, but I've had a major crisis to deal with in my real life. I just lost my mom at an age when nobody should be going through such a major loss and she was way too young to have been taken away from life. Be that as it may, I just wish there had been something I could do to keep her here with me and believe me, it is a tear in my soul I have to breathe through each day, every day. Now, at a time like this, I couldn't possibly write anything, let alone think enough to actually pick up a pen, until I realised that the only way I could keep her alive was if I honoured her wishes to the mark. This is me doing that, because my Mom was my biggest advocate and fan and this particular story was extremely close to her heart. She loved Rose and Dimitri, and she used to frequently quote them in real life too. This is my attempt at laying some flowers down on the ground in her memory. Hope you like it as much as she did.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the characters, just the plot. The familiar characters belong to Richelle Mead.
As it turned out, my mouth had quite the ability to garner attention, for it ran away from me the moment we reached the others. "What are you doing here ?" I asked of my parents, completely ignoring my manners in front of the Queen, in a show of poor form, that garnered me a disapproving look from my mother and a slight smirk from my father. He gave me a light hug, which was surprisingly warm and possibly just what I needed in my current state of mind. Not that I'd ever let him know that, but for someone I'd known just a few months, I felt more at ease with him than with the mother I'd known and resented for most of my life, though we were on our way to the mend.
"Little girl." Abe said. "You look good." I didn't feel particularly good, but alright; I wasn't going to counter it. We turned to the Queen and I gave her a small bow she acknowledged with a nod of her head. "Guardian Hathaway." She said, before turning her attention to Adrian and the others. She motioned for Adrian to join her and stepped a little ways away when he did, her Guardians fanning out around her and encircling her, both as a protective circle and as a buffer between us and the two of them. I wondered what that was about, but had something else to distract me as Christian and Eddie looked over at me and Abe, seemingly mindful of my proximity to him and wondering about it. Oh yeah, they didn't know he was my father. I wondered if they even knew who he was, but as I looked towards them, Christian's clearly intimidated look and Eddie's confused one made me realise that at least one of them knew who Abe was. I smirked slightly.
"Eddie, Christian." I called to them. "Meet my father, Abe Mazur." I said as both Eddie and Christian joined me, while Mom joined Abe. They made a strange couple, what with my prim and proper, hard as nails mother in her Guardian uniform and my mobster-with-questionable-taste-in-fashion father, who insisted on wearing loud-coloured, contrasting scarves even in eighty degree weather. I saw Eddie, too, recognize the name and turn visibly pale. Really ? Had I been the only one who hadn't heard of his name before meeting him ?
Eddie and Christian looked towards me again, before Christian started chuckling almost hysterically. I would have wondered if he was okay, but his stomach-holding laughter only annoyed me. What was so funny ? Christian momentarily recovered, only to gasp, "Only you, Rosie." I narrowed my eyes at him when Eddie took over.
"You do realize you are the daughter of the most dangerous man known to the Moroi community, right ? I hear even Strigoi have an irrational fear of him." He whispered in a sort of 'aside' manner to me, only to move away several inches when Abe glared at him. I swear, the man was enjoying toying with my friends. I rolled my eyes at him. He needn't worry about anything on that front, and it was that one single thought that sent my mood plummeting and crash-landing to despair again.
I had to stop this. I couldn't let each thought of mine lead me right back to...him. My smile vanished. Perhaps it was because it was all still very new and wounds of the heart took a long while to heal but each thought of him hurt; thinking of his name hurt; looking at the smallest things hurt; closing my eyes hurt; my throat and chest and stomach hurt. Breathing hurt, more than anything. Because it all reminded me of him. When had I become a person so dependent on another ? When had I let him become more than my air ? I swallowed. Perhaps he was always that. And he would possibly always be, but I also knew that this mission was perhaps also the best thing to happen to me, for it would provide the distance we needed, to heal and to forgive, and who knows, maybe one day saying his name wouldn't hurt so much. One day.
I closed my eyes for a brief moment, gathering my composure, non-existent as it was, and again asked my parents how they came to be here. Only it wasn't either of them who answered, but the Queen herself, who had returned, Adrian in tow. "You've been briefed about your assignment earlier, Guardian Hathaway." She said to me, even though that title, by general rule, belonged to my mother. "Now I'd like you to meet the person facilitating it." She turned to Abe. "Ibrahim has extended his sponsorship for this mission, which will help in keeping it covert and his connections will prove useful during the research." To say I was surprised would be the understatement of the century. Knowing, in theory, that my father was influential enough for his life to be all shades of mafia trouble was one thing, hearing it confirmed in a roundabout way by the Queen was another matter altogether. I blinked rapidly as Tatiana continued. "You will have access to every resource available, and I trust you will use it wisely. Anything you need shall be provided to you." She then turned towards Christian and Eddie. "We also expect this to never leave the space between us, yes ?" She practically commanded of them and they nodded, because you did not go against the wishes of the Queen. Satisfied, she turned back to Adrian, her gaze softening as it landed on him. "Take care of yourself, dear. I'll miss you." Her words were laced with such motherly affection that I felt I was intruding on a deeply personal moment and I turned away. Had I ever had any doubt as to what Adrian meant to her, that tone put to rest even the most vicious of my arguments. She genuinely cared for him and wanted the best for him, as evident by her next words, "Maybe try to take the College thing seriously now, too ?" Her tone was lighter, almost as if teasing with an internal joke, but there was some seriousness behind it too. I hope I could still be friend enough to Adrian to support him through this as much as I could. Would he even want my help ? I sighed, thinking back to the cuts he'd healed and the way everyone seemed to care for me.
Maybe I had been looking at things the wrong way. Maybe I actually had love and people who cared for me outside of Lissa and Dimitri, I thought as I looked at Christian and Eddie and my parents. Maybe all I needed was to change course and this pain would lessen. I was glad this mission was giving me something else to focus on than myself. I brought Eddie into a hug first, whispering lightly in his ear, "Take care of her." His nod let me know he understood and would do his best to honor my wishes. "And you take care of yourself, Hathaway. Court won't be the same without you." He squeezed my shoulders as I let him go and I smiled slightly. That was a promise I couldn't really make, but I hadn't the heart to tell him so.
Christian was next. We had already said almost everything we could to each other, and as it was, the setting was entirely too emotional for it to be comfortable to our dynamic, or so I thought, because a moment later, Christian rolled his eyes, muttering "Oh, whatever." and pulled me into a hug, whispering into my ear, " Don't you dare go dying while out there, okay ?" Now, that would have been a question that carried a concerned tone, except with Christian, he masked it with a teasing and joking one, one that let me know he was referring to my mental spiral and warning me to stay safe, all the while keeping it cool. I shook my head, partly in answer to him and partly wondering when I had started understanding Christian so well. But then again, I had always had a deeper understanding of him because of my bond to Lissa. She could read him particularly well, and I vicariously knew of his ticks too. Sometimes.
The goodbyes done, the four of us who were to join in on this mission boarded the plane, my father's Guardians following us. The trip was supposed to be a long one and I made myself comfortable on the plush chair, because who wouldn't expect Abe Mazur's private plane to be designed akin to a five-star presidential suite, and mentally pulled all my barriers against the ghosts tightly shut, though I knew it wouldn't help much. Adrian settled in the chair facing me, a glass already in his hand. Where had he even procured that ? I shook my head, but said nothing. At least his coping mechanism wasn't as dangerous as mine, I thought as I focused on the runway outside, fingering the small blade I had surreptitiously hidden in my pocket. I shouldn't even be thinking about it, but...
I let the thoughts in my head hang. It wasn't healthy by any means, but sometimes you have to let your head (the crazy, insane one) do the talking for a while lest the burden on the sane part of your brain turn you into useless mush. What was I to do in a situation like this ? I was leaving my whole life behind, the two halves of my heart and the only people I had ever loved with all my soul behind me. Maybe I shouldn't do this. The Queen must be right in her earlier opinions of me, she's been alive much longer than me, after all, and she has so much experience, she knows how the world works, and what the hell am I doing here ? I'm not the right person for this. I'm not the calm and sensible one, I never was; I'm the girl who kicks first and asks questions later; how do they expect me to be responsible enough to handle such a life-altering mission ? I can't do this. No, I can't leave. This wasn't how my life was supposed to go. No. No ! No !
I looked frantically out the window as the plane started its run, the road blurring beneath the plane's tyres reminding me of something going extremely wrong. This, this shouldn't be happening. I need to stop this. No, I just knew there's something extremely wrong about this whole thing. Voices shouted at me from all directions, the words unintelligible to me, and loud. Too loud. Leading to me covering my ears and rocking back and forth. Did I not have anybody who could stop these voices ?
A sinister part of me coiled round, laughing hysterically at my predicament. Of course. Of course I had no one to stop the voices. Who would want to take on as crazy a burden as me ? It was why Lissa wanted me to stop interfering in everything. It was why he, Dimitri, wanted nothing to do with me. That's right. Nothing. I was nothing. These people are crazy, I laughed to myself, part an amused chuckle and part a self-deprecating rumble, just the right mixture; these people were crazy to drag me into this. Research ? My ass. They were going to get nothing. Zilch. Zero. Had Spirit anything new to tell, they would've come across it long ago. Stupid stuck-up royals.
But then... why was I here ? Again, where is here, exactly ? I looked around, my eyes landing on someone. Molten brown eyes. Green eyes. Very cat-like in their colour. Something. Something in them I can't... something I can't read. They... look familiar. Sort of. I've seen them before. Were they in Portland ? When Lissa and I went there to hide ? Lissa. Lissa ! Where's she ?
But, wait. Lissa. She is the one responsible for all this. I can't focus because of her. Did... did she compel me ? No. She wouldn't do that. And why does this guy keep touching me ?! I shoved the green-eyed guy's hands off me and stood up, intending to go look for something, something I knew nothing about but was extremely important. Something I could feel in my bones, but the world shrunk to a small ball right in front of my eyes and the last thing I could recall was the hard impact of the floor scraping and probably bruising my knees.
Well, that's the end of this one. This was a standard length chapter, one that sets the ground for some exciting revelations ahead. Stay tuned, and don't forget to review. See you soon.
Love for all of you and your loved ones,
Ahluwalia Kaur X
