Look! An update! So, life sucks and is difficult. I've been working on revising everything, but now that'll all done and I'm committed to updating this. Because I want to write this, and it gives me joy.

Anyway, enjoy! Now cross-posted on Archive of Our Own.

Disclaimer: Everything recognizable belongs to the wonderful Richelle Meade! I'm just playing in the sandbox she created.

The last thing Mason Ashford saw before he died was Rose Hathaway.

It was fitting, he thought as he stood next to Rose as she slept in her bed at St. Vladimir's Academy and watched her uneasy sleep. Mason had spent most of his life looking at his female best friend, so it made sense her face was the last thing his living eyes saw before that male Strigoi – Isaiah, he thinks the name was – broke his neck and ended his life.

Joke's on Isaiah though, Mason chuckled to himself. At least I'm still here.

In life, Mason hadn't been religious whatsoever. He wanted to worship Rose Hathaway, of course, but God? Nah. He only believed in what he could do for himself, not what some "all-powerful" being hidden in the clouds was going to have him do. As a dhampir, Mason's life was already out of his control; he didn't want some person he couldn't see control his life either. But then he'd died and, after three days in some weird void, he'd found himself standing next to Rose as she was unpacking in her room at school. His limbs were light, and when he looked down, he found out they were white and smokey.

Holy shit. Was he a ghost? Wicked.

Maybe there was something to this "God' thing after all.

But he also thought it could be some cruel trick of the universe punishing him for running recklessly into danger and convincing his friends to do the same.

Rose stirred in her sleep and screwed her face up in terror at whatever she was seeing in the depths of her subconscious. Most likely, she was reliving the battle in the Spokane house – reliving his death. He wanted to reach out and touch her, reassure her he was right there next to her, that he was OK now, but something held him back. Something prevented him from connecting with her.

Not yet, the whispers explained. Not until it's time.

Mason became annoyed at the disembodied voices speaking in his ear. He had spent years waiting for his time.

Most of his short life had been spent waiting for the time Rose would look at him like she would a boyfriend or a potential romantic partner. When they were children, Mason had always felt pulled to her and was always willing to go along with her crazy schemes with Eddie Castile, the third point in their friendship triangle. As they'd started attaching '1's in front of their ages, Mason started to realize his love for Rose was different than Eddie's love for Rose. Eddie loved hanging out with Rose like he did, but he'd eventually go off and hang out with Shane Reyes and Meredith or some of the other young novices. Mason, though friends with the others, had only ever really wanted to be around Rose. Her eyes, her hair, and her absolute love for life drew Mason in like a moth to a flame, and his moth was absolutely willing to fly straight into her flame if she ever asked him to do so. But when they'd entered the high school part of the Academy, and it seemed like she'd gone to bed a plank one night and woke up looking like an hourglass – a rarity, even among dhampir girls – other guys noticed.

Specifically, that asshole Royal Jesse Zeklos.

Mason had watched silently (and, sometimes, not so silently) as Rose was led around by dipshits like Zeklos and other Royal Moroi who wanted nothing more than to score her. And he watched as she'd responded with flirtation and seduction (or whatever passed for seduction at 14 years old). Then he'd had to listen to the rumors about her exploits with guys (who weren't him) and he started throwing himself into his training to avoid beating up the Moroi he was – eventually – supposed to protect.

When the accident happened, however, Mason stopped trying to be with her and instead just tried to be there for her. But Rose was different. As in, constantly starting fights (more so than usual), blowing off her schoolwork and her training, and partying more and more. Mason didn't know how to connect with her, how to get through to her. And just when he thought he'd figured it out, she disappeared and took Princess Vasilisa Dragomir with her.

For two years, Mason had to figure out life without Rose. He trained hard and rose steadily through the novice ranks, he studied hard and did well in school, he started hooking up with Meredith, and he spent more time with Eddie who also seemed to be lost without their third point on the friendship triangle. But they were dealing; they were OK.

And then Rose had been brought back to St. Vladimir's. And Mason realized just how much he wanted to be Rose's boyfriend and how much he wanted to see that shining out of her gorgeous chocolate eyes when she looked at him.

But he had only ever seen friendship. It was OK, he told himself. One day she'll look at me like Sonya Karp looked at Mikhail Tanner when they thought no one else was watching. He just had to keep at it.

He couldn't spend as much as he wanted to with her because she was on constant lockdown. Rose spent her days either doing homework in her room or training in the gym with Dimitri Belikov (he was still super fucking jealous about that). He knew she was walking on a narrow tightrope with the school's administration due to her taking Lissa out of the Academy, but he also thought they were being too harsh in their punishments.

They didn't know Rose as well as he did, he conceded, but it should have been obvious to anyone who met her Rose would never do something as rash and risky as that without a very good reason. Headmistress Kirova had been waiting for an excuse to expel Rose for years, and now she was taking the opportunity to exact petty revenge on Rose and Mason had been kind of disgusted. He had a pretty good idea of how she kept Lissa alive, if the longing looks she gave Lissa's feeder during her friend's feeding time were any indication, and he thought that kind of dedication should have been rewarded.

But no one asked his opinion. So, Mason was left to support her from the shadows.

Much like he was right now.

Hours after he'd spontaneously appeared in Rose's bedroom, Mason was watching Rose as she slept. Creepy? Eh, maybe, but what else was he going to do. This was something he'd dreamed about in life – albeit, in very different circumstances.

In the darkness of her small bedroom, the light from the sun from the small crack in her curtains cast a halo around her head and highlighted the red tints in her hair he loved to search for. Apricot sunrays glinted off the tears spilling down her face, and he noticed she clutched a roll of blue hand wraps – his blue hand wraps, the ones he'd given her before they'd left the Academy for the Lodge – in her left fist. Mason felt something in him tighten – he couldn't feel his heart anymore, since he didn't have one, so maybe it was a phantom pain – and when Rose suddenly woke up from her nightmare and started sobbing over those hand wraps, he had never been angrier about being forced, once again, to the sidelines.

But just as he got ready to try to break through whatever forcefield was holding him back, Mason heard a knock at Rose's bedroom door. Her head raised and she wiped at her eyes before answering, her voice wracked with grief.

"Who's there?"

A beat. "It's me."

Mason could hear the faint Russian accent in the deep voice, made even deeper by sleep deprivation and the whisper volume at which he needed to speak considering the location and the hour at which he was here. He knew that voice, knew who it belonged to, and despite the throbbing in the back of his skull that told him he knew why Dimitri Belikov was outside knocking on Rose's door late at night, Mason didn't want to admit what was happening.

Rose pulled herself out of bed, leaving the blue wraps on her pillow, and her oversized red t-shirt brushed against the middle of her thighs as her cabin-socked feet lightly padded across the tile floor to the door. Fiddling with the locks, Rose opened the door wide enough for Belikov to slip unnoticed into her room. While Rose re-locked the door, Belikov slid off his duster. Folding it neatly, he laid it over the back of her wooden desk chair and toed off his black sneakers before storing them under her desk, leaving him in a casual outfit of dark jeans, a grey cotton V-neck, and a pair of black socks. When she turned around, leaning up against the wood of the door to stare at him fully, Belikov only hesitated a moment before crossing the room in a handful of strides and sweeping her up into his arms.

Rose hadn't considered Mason as a potential romantic partner because she already had one. And she never looked at Mason with love in her eyes – and not the kind of love one reserves for a friend – because she was already looking at someone else like that. Mason could only stare helplessly as he saw the look – the sparkle – he'd always wanted to see directed his way, be directed toward another.

The girl he loved was in love with the man he idolized. Not even death could stop Mason's heart from shattering as his worst fears were confirmed.

The man in question was currently running his hands gently up and down Rose's back as he held her tightly, allowing her to cry on his shoulder before silently guiding her back to her bed. Rose crawled into the waiting warmth of her soft-looking duvet (Lissa's responsibility, no doubt), and Belikov shucked off his jeans and his socks, setting his alarm before folding himself into the small space in the bed next to her. Rose then moved so she was almost laying on top of him – tossing her left arm across his chest and throwing her left leg across his lower stomach while curling her right arm under his left shoulder – and his arms wrapped around her back to hold her securely to his body.

"Thank you for coming tonight," Rose sniffled.

Belikov just stroked her hair. "Of course, milaya. I wouldn't be anywhere else."

Belikov gently moved her up on his chest a bit more, so her head was resting on his collar bone and pulled the blankets over their bodies. Rose snuggled deeper into his side. Silence reigned for a few moments, and then Belikov spoke with soft tones.

"What you're going through right now – the grief, the anger, the guilt – is completely natural. You went through something horrible, something not even I can understand fully, and you're going to process that however you need to process. But I want you to know I am here for you – in whatever capacity you need me to there for you."

Another sniffle from Rose and her arm tightened across his body, trying to get closer to his warmth. "I just need you like this. I just need you to hold me like this."

Belikov dropped a kiss to her hair – the hair Mason had spent hours searching for dreamed about running his fingers through – and Rose turned her head up to receive a sweet kiss from her mentor (boyfriend?) before they moved further under the covers.

Silence for a bit, and Mason was about to move closer to study the pair before he heard a whisper. And not a whisper from one of the voices holding him back from challenging Belikov to a duel of honor over Rose (he thinks being a ghost will actually give him the win). No, it was a whisper from his girl.

His Rose.

"I love you, Dimitri."

A pause. "I love you too, Roza." And then they drifted off asleep.

Mason shouldn't have been surprised. Not really. He knew something was happening between them, but it was something he kept pushing to the back of his mind and ignoring. He'd seen the looks between them, and he'd seen how they always gravitated toward each other when the other was nearby. He'd seen how they trained together, how they moved as if they were dancing…or doing something Mason couldn't stand to have the imagery of in his mind…and not just sparring. Mason had been at the Academy when Belikov arrived on scene, and it seemed like the hard, stoic guardian who'd arrived had – for lack of a better term – blossomed after Rose had, literally (if the stories of the retrieval mission were believed), jumped into his life. Likewise, Rose became more grounded, more cautious, and more likely to try to wait and analyze a situation before reacting to it. It was so mature – so like Belikov – but Mason hadn't wanted to notice it.

And his insistence upon ignorance had led to this moment.

Well, maybe not exactly to him being dead. That part was his fault. But somewhere deep inside of Mason, he knew he had gone out to search for the Strigoi due to a weird mix of revenge and wanting to prove himself the "alpha male" who deserved Rose's affection. His uncle, who'd also been a guardian, had been killed along with Arthur Schoenburg in the massacre that took the entire Drozdov line. The entire time Mason had been at the Lodge, he'd been harboring increasing anger and resentment for the Council, which declined to even try and go take out the responsible next and who allowed the ignorant and self-important Royal Moroi to use the lives of dhampirs as they saw fit.

Whether or not they died, the Moroi couldn't care less – they only cared about themselves, and it showed during that final meeting where Camille Conta had been advocating sending children to war and Tasha Ozera then lighting someone's jacket on fire to prove a point. And Mason, still grieving for the loss of his uncle…well, all Mason had wanted to do was go find them and kill Strigoi. But he'd been tempered by the fact Rose was finally showing some interest in him.

The spark of love still wasn't in her eyes, but he figured it would come with time. She was spending more time with him, right? Although she would disappear from early morning until late afternoon to train with Belikov, Rose would then seek him out to hang out with him, play pool with him, get food with him, go skiing with him and stay by his side at Adrian Ivashkov's pool party. She'd even, at one point, looked like she might want to kiss him. For someone who'd singularly wanted her attention, Mason was in heaven. Finally…it was his time. And, honestly, that hope was enough to temper the instinct to pull a frat boy move and leave the safety of the Lodge and go hunt down the Strigoi who killed his uncle.

But then he'd heard the way Rose and Dimitri had interacted on the roof after her time at the Voda banquet. At that point, Mason's frustration and anger at their society – everything that had been building since his uncle was killed and every reaction since then had to do with protecting the Moroi at the expense of the dhampirs – just bubbled up as his hopes at finally having a chance with the girl he'd been in love with since he was a small child went up in flames. He'd gotten angry – at their world for not going out to eradicate the threat, at Belikov for stealing the girl he'd loved first, at Rose for not wanting him, but then at himself because he didn't do anything about it sooner.

So, instead, he'd fought with Rose and when she accidentally blurted out where the guardians thought the Strigoi nest was located, Mason had – swept up in a moment of teenage boy idiocy – decided he was going to do what the other guardians, including Belikov, were not. He'd needed Mia, with whom he'd commiserated about the attack after the meeting, to compulse the guard into letting them go and then had run into Eddie on the way out and convinced him to join the ranks of the raiding party. If Mason had been thinking clearly, he would have done none of this. He knows that now. At the time, he'd needed to prove himself and allowed his emotions to get the better of him.

And it cost him his life.

Well, not really. He would have been fine if he'd stayed outside with Christian, Mia, and Eddie. But Rose had willingly sacrificed herself to distract the Strigoi and the remaining humans while they made their escape, and Mason felt guilty about leaving her when she was only in the situation because she needed to get him and the others back to safety. He went back to help her, to apologize in the way he knew best, and he'd died and caused her this pain because he'd been irrational with anger and jealousy.

Sitting in the relative darkness of her room, watching as she slept more easily with Belikov in her bed than she had without the Russian, Mason knew his unintentional sacrifice had saved her life. But his guilt at the situation remained, and Mason had read "A Christmas Carol" – that guilt must be chaining him to her until the moment he can assuage that guilt. Whenever that may be.

Unconsciously, Rose's left hand snaked its way across the empty mattress on Belikov's right side to grasp the roll of hand wraps. Although Mason "felt" his stomach clench, he was reassured she cared for him so much. It may not have been in the way he wanted, but he'd take it.

The last thing Mason Ashford had seen before he died was Rose Hathaway. It was fitting she would also be the last thing he would see – be tethered to on Earth – before salvation. Maybe his salvation would be doing the thing he'd always done - helping her from the shadows.

He knew when he finished whatever job he was supposed to do here, he would move on to whatever the hell was next. Either way, Mason wasn't going to waste a moment of looking at her face.

OK, so fun fact: Mason's uncle actually was a Drozdov guardian. He was most likely killed in the attack with Mia's mother. This is said in the first book where Mason's giving Rose dirt on Mia's family, and when I was listening to the audiobook that registered and I was like, "holy hell" and I kid you not the roadmap to this one shot was immediately paved in my mind.

Between that, and Drew Liner's portrayal of Mason in the TV show (which I absolutely love, btw), I was hella inspired.

As always, only constructive criticism allowed - please, no flames! Fare the well my darlings, and I'll see you Fridays!