SUMMARY: Set in Blood Promise. Abe's pov.
WORDCOUNT: ~1600

Written for 100moods. Prompt: anxious.

ROAD TRIP
by Leni

Hathaway women would be the death of me.

Almost twenty years ago, Janine Hathaway had been a mistake worth making, the best of a thousand worlds a young man focused on power hadn't cared to imagine – or to keep.

She had been beautiful and tiny, a porcelain doll with a core of steel, idealistic in her view of the future, stubborn like few dhampir women would dare to be. She had been – and still was, from all accounts – a firm wall of principles that could bend if the circumstances demanded it (and her spoiled lover had demanded it) but never as much as showed a crack. She had been selfless, though I had not recognized it at the time, gentle and with a quick, sober humor that had fit my own. I'd heard of how fearsome she would become when her charges were under a threat, but around me, she was just… Janine.

I still couldn't tell whether she or I had been the naïve one.

The world had believed that I'd ensnared her, lured the most promising guardian in years into a liaison that had distracted her and almost destroyed her destiny.

As if God Himself could tell her what to do.

I had honestly thought my time with Janine had been enough of a lesson. I'd believed I was making love to a sweet-faced guardian with a killer body, and before I noticed, our week together had turned into a month, and then six, and I had actually looked forward to that first anniversary when everything had blown up in my face.

Young men are bastards. I'll be the first to own up to that.

Where I'd been making time, and even joining her to play house on her downtime, Janine had been making plans. Plans. Even now, the word makes me shiver unless I'm the mastermind behind them. She had built a world around her hopes of me, and when I'd dashed them, she had been quick to make the world crash around me – as well as slammed her knee to the spot it would hurt the most.

I can tell you, even having never met Janine's daughter: never expect that because she's crying, she'll show weakness. Hathaway women have better things to do with their time than to wallow. Most people mourn their losses; Janine never hesitated to pour her sadness into action.

I could not imagine Rosemarie doing anything else.

Where the Dragomir child had wasted away after her family's death, my daughter had sneaked her away from that fortress known as St. Vladimir's Academy and kept her alive in the human world for two years. Not much past her fifteenth birthday, and she'd proved herself in ways few seasoned guardians ever could.

My spies had a hard time keeping tabs on them, and I have to admit, every time they admitted to have lost the trail of the two teenagers, I grew a little more proud of my child.

Stubborn like her mother. Loyal to her Moroi, too.

But the way Rosemarie went about achieving her goals…. Ah. I would have conceived a way to meet her just because of that.

I never dreamed she would be the one to cross the Atlantic and land herself straight in my playground. Or that she'd make the acquaintance of my pet Alchemist so soon.

Or that her goal would be to reach a dhampir community. She was her mother's daughter, and I still remembered Janine's impression of those places.

Rosemarie didn't seem the type to get entangled with some young Moroi, bear his love child and come to raise it in Siberia. The only plausible candidate was the one funding this trip, and though that alone should be damning evidence, I'd made it my business to get to know Adrian Ivashkov in the last months.

The queen's favorite was risking her displeasure over an underage dhampir girl with a damaged reputation.

Not the kind of man who would pack her off to the furthest corner of the world.

But if not a rejected lover, neither was Rosemarie the kind of guardian who left everything behind – including her self-appointed charge – and travelled all the way to some far-away village on a whim. Was she a lovesick girl or a rogue? Was she just a wild teenager in search of adventure? Whatever the answer was, the possibilities were enough to prod me into investigating her motives myself. Some things could not be trusted to underlings.

If she had decided to leave the guardians, I had options for her. If she wanted adventure, I could give her the world. If she was in love… well.

Like I said, young men were bastards. Even the ones with the best intentions. And young women, even Hathaway women, could act stupid when they fashioned themselves in love.

I would take care of that, should I need to.

The plan had been simple: get to know her in Baia, assess which was the best course for her, and send her on her way.

Trust a child of mine to be as eager as myself to follow someone else's plan.

I neverconsidered Strigoi, though. I had not expected the bastards to be anywhere close to her. Someone would pay for giving me such false data, otherwise I'd have never given the okay to the girl Alchemist to continue their way on their own!

I believed in God enough to be thankful that I was already halfway there, and to curse him for making the first meeting with my daughter a living nightmare.

Janine Hathaway had rattled my world when she left.

Her daughter was threatening to shake it to its foundation without even setting eyes on me.

Yes, Hathaway women would be the death of me.

My guardians had laid Rosemarie along the backseat, and I only had to turn a little to look at her face. She was bloodied and bruised, in and out of consciousness ever since we'd started this last leg to Baia. It was a miracle that she was alive, a seventeen-year-old dhampir girl alone against two Strigoi, but even miracles wouldn't be enough unless I got her help soon.

If the little Alchemist hadn't been riding with us, perhaps I'd have laughed.

My most powerful argument against Janine's plea had been that I wanted power, that, over everything else, I valued control and influence over my peers and over my so-called betters.

The last time I had seen her mother, she had held her head high, as if she'd never wanted me to be more than a sperm donor. Not two months later, I'd heard news that Janine had worked her way to one of the most coveted posts among guardians in the area. Somewhere in-between, she took care to inform me of my duties and rights toward her child: none whatsoever.

The joke was on me.

I'd made good on my vow; I was now known and respected across continents, I'd amassed power in about every sector of our society – and yet, none of that could help the child I'd given up for its sake.

She groaned, clearly in pain. "Dim-"

"Hush. We're almost there," I whispered, low enough that the human didn't pick up on it.

I'd never wanted so badly to talk to Janine's child.

Eighteen years I'd spent alternatively ignoring her and keeping track of her every movement. I'd glanced through the occasional picture of her, the grades she made at school and her teachers' reports. I'd even watched half a dozen videos from the time she and the young Dragomir had been on the run.

I had always thought her a mirror of her mother, but for her coloring.

Never had I wondered how much of myself there might be in her.

"Dimitri!" she cried out, her voice mostly smothered against the car seat. Anyone who hadn't been paying close attention to her would have missed it. "Dim- Don't…!"

Ah.

There was but one person named Dimitri in her files, and it was someone she should be calling Guadian Belikov if she had to call out for him at all. His name had been listed among the casualties of the Strigoi attack, though details of the event had not yet leaked to the general public. I just happened to have a marked interest in St. Vladimir's Academy – especially when my child's life came at risk within its walls.

Why did Belikov's name come up in Rosemarie's delirium?

I had an answer, and I did not like it. Live young men, I could deal with. Guardians turned Strigoi were somewhat out of my sphere.

"Dimitri…"

No wonder Janine had left her in order to make her career. One hour with her and I already wanted to pledge the world to her, spoil her into a true princess with the right to look down at the royals.

It was too late for that, but I could improvise.

She wanted a Belikov; I'd give her a household of them. I'd even do her the favor not to break the news of the young man's fate, or even hint that she knew him personally.

After that, I'd find out why she'd made the long trek to Siberia, and when I didn't like the answer – and I wouldn't, because now I had a good idea of it – I'd point her back to the States.

I could give Rosemarie the world if she asked. But she didn't need that anymore than her mother had.

She needed Janine.

Because, between the two of us, Janine was the one who could teach our child how to move on after a broken heart.

The End
09/12/12