#update :) Set between "Blood Promise" and "Spiritbound."
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.
Victor Dashkov knew what he did was wrong.
He knew it, but he also didn't care. Even sitting in his cell in Tarasov, with bright midday sunlight pouring into the small space and irritating his skin to the point where he wanted to scratch it all off and leave it in a pile on the floor, Victor wouldn't have changed a thing about what led to him being trapped in the high-security Moroi prison.
Well, except for how he dealt with Rose Hathaway.
He'd underestimated (only slightly, he thought) how powerful he'd made the lust charm on the necklace and if he could go back and do it over again, Victor would have put a hell of a lot more power into the charm to make sure her and her "mentor" – Dimitri Belikov – wouldn't have had the mental capacity to care about anything but each other. He'd also underestimated how deep the bond between Rose and Vasilisa Dragomir ran – how well it had developed in their two years on the run. He'd honestly thought Rose could just sense what the Dragomir princess could feel, not actually get drawn into her thoughts and see the world – literally – through her eyes.
It had been highly uncharacteristic of him to make so many errors in judgement, to act based on assumptions and not discerned fact, and those errors had costed him. His freedom, primarily, but also his legacy and the respect of his family's name.
But time had been running out, and Victor had been a very desperate man.
As the Alaskan sunlight made ants crawl painfully beneath his skin and the drip drip drip of the leaky pipe outside the bars of his cell window rang like a metronome in his skull, Victor wanted to bang his head against the fortified wall. He should be sitting on Tatiana's Vlad-damned throne, not sitting in a jail cell. He should be making laws and changing Moroi society for the better and bringing it out of the fucking Dark Ages, not choosing peasant meals from the disgustingly limited options which his guards brought him twice a day. He should have his own – separate – personal pool of feeders, not receiving microwaved bagged blood three times a day.
Though a prisoner, Victor Dashkov was Royal. He was the PRINCE of his Royal line. That should still mean something, even within the heavily fortified walls which held some of the vampire world's most dangerous people.
Maybe he should have shown remorse for what he'd done – not mean it, mind you, but at least make it seem that way. Instead, Victor – thinking himself somewhat invincible (they weren't really going to put him in prison, right?) – had declared he wasn't sorry in the slightest.
Even though he really wasn't.
Sitting in front of Royal Moroi society in that dusty, stifling courtroom, Victor couldn't understand why people were upset about what had transpired. Sure, Vasilisa had gotten hurt, but if she had simply agreed to heal him he wouldn't have had to force her with torture. If Christian Ozera had just let his guards take the Princess and hadn't tried to stop them, or better yet, hadn't felt the need to follow her to their "secret" love nest above the church, then he wouldn't have been knocked out. And for that matter, what kind of impulsive teenage moron stows away in a guardian van and then decides to try to fight off four psi-hounds? Christian, truly, brought his injuries upon himself.
And then Rose and Belikov...Well, Victor really thought they should have thanked him for the lust charm, not angry about it. Yes, there was the whole "dubious consent" thing because both of them were not in their right minds, but it would have happened sooner or later. And at least Victor made them both realize their feelings for each other and showed them those feelings couldn't be ignored.
If Victor hadn't been so rushed with his plans and had gone with his first instinct to err on the side of caution and overpower the charm on that gorgeous necklace, and had taken some more time to understand the depth of the bond, he might have gotten away with it. If it hadn't been for that damn, meddling novice and her stupid guardian lover, Victor wouldn't be here in Tarasov trying to avoid the constant Alaskan sun. He'd be leading the Moroi Court in Pennsylvania into the 21st century.
Yes, he was very – how had Natalie put it once – "salty" about his predicament.
Natasha Ozera was correct: the Moroi, for too long, had relied solely upon their dhampir guardians for protection and had reduced their magic to simple party tricks. They'd lived their lives in luxury – especially the Royals – and had grown elitest and lazy. They were too comfortable at the top with their wealth and power and got off on subjugating the dhampir population – even though the dhampirs almost single-handedly kept their sorry-excuses-for-Moroi asses alive. With the way things were going, the Royals were going to get desperate to hold onto power by turning the dhampirs into slaves and Strigoi cannon fodder and build elite compounds while leaving the non-royals out in the cold and guardian-less, very vulnerable to Strigoi attacks.
Victor had foreseen this long ago.
He was smart, graduated with multiple honors, and rose quickly through the ranks of his family to helm the vast Dashkov industries and mold them into global successes. He saw – where maybe others either did not or ignored – how the Royals had become incrementally relaxed with their power and how they began passing laws to maintain that power even as the non-Royal numbers grew and the dhampir numbers dwindled. He'd spent years trying to quietly convince his fellow Royals to think about the consequences of their actions, to take active roles in their own protection, to get non-royal support by making the guardian application requests open to everyone, destigmatizing dhampir-Moroi relationships and allow guardian numbers to increase. Making people happy, not hateful, was the way to gain their loyalty – not by using fear tactics, intimidation, and subjugation. Victor had tried his best to advocate for progress without ostracizing the Moroi who were more likely to vote on policies that maintained hegemony in the power structure of their society – middle of the road politics, if you will. Little by little, he'd tried to ease his fellow Royals into moving forward adapting to the societal progression, but more and more they voted to keep things the same as Strigoi attacks increased and their fear took hold.
With his global business dealings, Victor was seeing the effects of this lack of adaptation and push to hold onto power and tradition and hegemony: the dhampirs and the non-Royal Moroi were growing restless and angry. They felt their rights were being taken away from them and they were being reduced in their society to make way for the wealthy and powerful elites. They decided to turn their backs on society altogether and make their way in the world alone. While Victor couldn't blame them one bit, it also proved to be a problem as the ruling class became more comfortable in pushing their skewed agenda due to lack of pushback.
Academies like St. Vladimir's drilled it into the kids' heads from the time they were small that the Moroi – especially the Royals – were to be protected, and the dhampirs were to give up their lives to do so. It was kind of a sick thing to teach a kid, to be honest, and more and more dhampirs were starting to realize that. They were sick of being thought of as little more than cannon fodder and wall art for temperamental overgrown children, and so some of the dhampirs – especially the overseas ones – dropped out of academies to avoid graduation and assignment or dhampirs were retiring earlier and earlier and taking on human jobs and starting families.
People wanted rights – wanted freedom to live their own lives the way they saw fit – and they wanted respect and to be treated like they matter. And, if the small snippets of gossip from the guards were true, the Royals were primed to start passing legislation that would treat an entire race as little more an livestock.
Victor benefitted greatly from this system, it's true, but even he thought that was quite barbaric. And when his wife, the mother of his only child and a fire-user, was murdered by Strigoi because she couldn't defend herself after her guardians – good, capable men, all of them – fell, he became angry at the society that failed to equip her with the skills she would have needed to potentially save herself. He would have changed all of that – would have ushered in a new world order, one where Moroi were still ruling but dhampirs would have been able to help shape their world into a better one. And Victor was almost ready to do so – had he not been diagnosed with Sandovsky's Syndrome, one of the worst chronic illnesses a Moroi could get. Tatiana, fearing he would not reign long due to the rapid degeneration the disease was known for, had therefore declined to name him as heir apparent.
The disappointed quickly gave way to anger, and anger gave way to grim determination to get the crown no matter what. Which is why, when he suspected Vasilisa of possessing the same gifts as his half-brother, Robert Doru, Victor began planning.
Desperation will make many a man do things he never previously thought he was capable of doing, and Victor found out he was most definitely willing to hold a young girl hostage and make her heal him for as long as she could if it meant he would get his crown. The reason he'd wanted the princess and not his half-brother? The scope of her abilities and the existence of her bond with Rose.
When Robert began manifesting unusual elemental magic in their early teens, Victor began researching. Through old texts and stories, and then looking around the world for Moroi who also manifested the same characteristics in their magics as an adult, Victor began putting together a comprehensive picture of what element his brother could wield. Each user, though gifted in a wide range of attributes like compulsion, healing, dream-walking, mind-reading, and empathy, was stronger in one. Robert's gifts, Victor soon discovered, lay more in the dream-walking side of things, so asking him for healing was not going to work. And, there was the madness that threatened Robert's mind, a madness that could have been mitigated had Robert not lost his bondmate – a dhampir guardian named Alden, who Robert had said helped him manage the "darkness" of spirit.
He'd gone through his list of spirit users; one he'd privately maintained in case he'd needed to ask for their help (like he was trying to do). And, out of all the spirit users he'd discovered, no one could heal quite like Vasilisa Dragomir.
He'd read reports of the accident. He'd visited the spot where it happened. Vasilisa was the only one who would have reasonable survived the crash, smushed between Rose and Andre in the center point of the SUV transporting the Dragomir family and their dhampir ward. Victor had also read a list of the injuries Andre had sustained, and even Vasilisa had suffered from cuts and scrapes and a large bruise where the seatbelt had caught her as the car went rolling. But Rose? She was completely free of injury and had no memory of the accident as it was happening or how she'd gotten out of the car.
The signs, if someone was looking for them, were there. While Rose's surprising lack of injuries were abnormal and no one could figure that out, the depression Vasilisa seemed to fall into after the accident and Rose's increased "zest for life" – temperamental and reckless behavior, rampant rule-breaking, increased need for, how did he put this, male company – and how both Vasilisa and Rose became even closer after the accident could all be explained away by the mental effects of losing all three Dragomirs horrifically, violently, and suddenly. Victor watched the pair and, with Robert's help, identified the signs of a bond. That bond, paired with the accident report and the princess' lack of specialization, gave Victor a pretty good idea of her abilities.
All Victor then had to do was confirm his suspicions.
For legal reasons, Victor couldn't just kill someone and see if she brought them back. So, he recruited Natalie into helping him by compulsing her to capture and kill animals she could find within the wards of St. Vladimir's, deliver them to Vasilisa, and then stay and watch to see if she brought them back. Natalie had started with the raven. When that proved to be successful, and confirmed Victor's theory, others soon followed. And then both girls disappeared.
The anger he'd felt in the moment he'd found out they were gone…he'd never felt anything like it. He'd worked so hard, and all his work went up in smoke and in his rage, he'd commanded a small pack of psi-hounds to track them down and bring them back. But when the psi-hounds hadn't returned, Victor's flaring anger turned into molten lava – moving steadily and determined to destroy everything in its path.
When he'd heard Ivan Zeklos had died and his guardian had been remanded back to Court, Victor had pulled some strings within the Council and had him assigned to the Princess so Belikov could also lead the taskforce to find bring her back. They'd made repeated contact over the year-long investigation, and through that time Victor had gotten a pretty good read on the man and gained his trust as he worked out how to neutralize the man when the time came.
When Belikov met Rose, however, the plan began to take shape.
From the moment Belikov had spoken up for Rose, a wild girl he'd only met hours before, and then fought with Headmistress Kirova to keep her at St. Vladimir's Academy, Victor knew something was afoot. In all of Victor's dealings with the man, both during his days as primary guardian for the young Zeklos lord and then during the year he'd spent tracking down Rose and Vasilisa, he'd never known Belikov to go up against authority like that. The man seemed like a virulent rule-follower, and it would have taken some sort of big feeling to stand up for someone on the verge of expulsion – especially for why Rose was being expelled – and Victor, who'd already been deep in planning the kidnapping, was put on alert for a way to also deter Rose from responding immediately once Belikov brought the bond to light.
In the two months or so he'd spent planning the kidnapping to coincide with the Equinox Dance (ideal because almost every school guardian would be occupied with making sure teenagers didn't spike the punch, cause ruckus with parties, or sneak off together), Victor – in addition to watching Vasilisa for more signs of her ability – had made Rose and Belikov a top priority. He'd had Spiridon follow them to their extra trainings, he'd had Natalie watch them during class time, and once in a while he'd eavesdrop on guardian conversations about the pair during meals. Looking back, Victor decided it wasn't his fault he hadn't made the charm powerful enough – he knew there were feelings, deep feelings, but he miscalculated the charm's ability to completely override Belikov's self-control.
It was powerful enough to delay the school guardians by an hour or two. But if Belikov hadn't been so damn self-controlled, he'd have spent the entire night fucking Rose into his mattress in a lust-induced haze. It wouldn't have mattered if Vasilisa hadn't agreed to heal him immediately, nor would it have mattered it had taken his personal guardians so damn long to get to the secondary location with the Dragomir heir. Belikov's self-control was too great to prevent complete success, and he'd managed to somehow break the lust charm to help Rose thwart Victor's plans at his house in the woods.
Victor even managed to be thwarted during his escape from the school cells! All because Belikov had decided to be noble and self-sacrificing and had lied to Rose about why the lust charm worked. If Belikov had told her the truth, she wouldn't have felt the need to confront Victor – which he knew had drawn Belikov's interest – and Natalie would have finished her off and allowed him to escape through the wards and into the car he'd made sure was waiting in the forest.
He'd tried to get back at them, using his knowledge of the lust charm in court by exposing them for the entire Royal Council to hear. Although he was lying through his teeth, Belikov's reputation was too impeccable for anyone to second-guess his story about the "attack charm." The only two people who'd be able to say what really happened were Rose herself, who didn't want to get Dimitri or herself in trouble, and Victor, who they wouldn't believe no matter what he said. Also, the necklace, but Dimitri had broken the one-time only charm when he took it off Rose's neck.
Looking back knowing the things he did now, Victor didn't know if he really could have changed any of his plans. If Rose could really see through Vasilisa's eyes, be in her head, and still be able to see and hear everything, Victor would have kidnapped her too. He couldn't kill her – the bond was needed to siphon the bad energy off of the princess and Victor could have probably figured out a way to prolong Rose's life. Not her sanity, mind you. The darkness probably would have broken her mind at some point, but as long as her heart was still beating the darkness would keep flowing. Besides, in addition to her usefulness as a vampiric sponge, Rose had grown into quite an attractive young woman.
And Victor had always liked collecting pretty things.
As Victor sat in his drafty cell in the depths of the Alaskan wilderness, with nothing to keep him company but his thoughts, he was struck by a sudden feeling he wasn't going to be in that cell much longer. One way or another, he was going to get out of there and be free once more. When the time came, he needed to be ready.
He was coming for that throne. And this time, nothing would stop him.
So, I think Victor - like Tasha - had good intentions. At their core, both of their visions for the vampire world are the same: Strigoi bad, Moroi lazy, and dhampirs deserve better. However, their characters become warped by greed (Victor, for power) and lust (Tasha, for Dimitri) and through upsetting setbacks that cause them to be angry with and further disillusioned by their world, especially when you think about how both are part of the ruling elite. While they become villains in the books, they're not actual villains. They both genuinely want better for their society. Think of it as how the One Ring morphs Smeagol (Gollum) from a hobbit to an evil, violent creature who's entire being is changed by the Ring's power. Victor is probably a good guy, but circumstance turned him into someone so warped and so desperate for power he looked at the daughter of his good friend as a tool to keep him alive and compulsed (because I do believe he used compulsion) his daughter into not only killing animals and psychologically torturing her friend, but then also turning Strigoi to break him out of prison.
But that's just me lol
The TV show seems to be steering itself into some sort of prequel-esque type thing, although it's too far gone to even try to adhere to the books at this point regardless. Victor is on his way to becoming addicted to healings, Sonya - in her grief and darkness - turned Strigoi, Lissa could marry Christian to get her quorom, and traditionalist Tatiana Vogel will be named queen and throw vampire society back into the Dark Ages where dhampirs have no rights and the church and state become one (for worse). I'm really loving the "Dominion-verse," and I eagerly await new episodes each Thursday (even though I really want to slap Dimitri upside the head for being a dumbass)!
As always, my darlings, please comment (constructive criticism only)! I'll see you soon!