~ Rose ~

I couldn't make the butterflies in my stomach go away. Dimitri and I set the table in the large dining room, while Christian and Lissa finished up the last few things for dinner. Everyone was encouraging me to sit back and relax, but I couldn't. I needed something to distract me. Thankfully, Dimitri understood.

"It's going to be alright, you know." His words snapped me out of my absent minded fiddling with the place settings.

"Huh?"

"Seeing your parents again. It's going to be okay. They're excited to see you. They wanted to come as soon as we told Janine, but your mother was in the middle of a shift and your father was taking care of some business of his own." I could detect a bit of spite towards the end of his sentence.

"Do you and my parents not get along?"

"What makes you think that?" He asked, as if I didn't have any evidence of my suspicions.

"You mean besides the fact that you sounded like you wanted to push my father off a cliff?"

He stopped, taking a breath and letting it out in a sigh. "You always have been able to see right through me. I have great respect for your mother. She's one of the best in our profession and it's been an honor to learn from her. I have a fair bit of respect for your father too. He's good at what he does, I just don't always agree with it."

"Is he a bad person?" I was genuinely concerned now. Dimitri seemed to by the type to find the best in everyone, and even now he seemed to be trying to do so, but he was struggling.

"Not necessarily bad, but you could say that he knows how to be deceptive and manipulative when he wants to be."

"Those aren't exactly great traits, Dimitri."

"No, but they can be useful ones when the situation calls for it."

I heard the doorbell ring from the front room.

"I got it!" Eddie called.

I could hear the door open and my entire body felt like it was tensing up. When I heard Adrian's voice, I let out a breath that I didn't know I had been holding. The hand on my shoulder made me jump.

"You need to relax, Rose. Everything will be fine."

"You don't get it, Dimitri. I'm more nervous about this than anything else." I was pleading with him to understand.

"I can see that," he reassured me gently, "the question is: why?"

I took a deep breath. I didn't honestly know how to explain it, but I took the best shot I could. "Everything else is replaceable. My friends, my job, even my own name. The one thing that I couldn't replace over the past two years was my family. Could you imagine living life never knowing your family? There's nothing that can fill that position in your world. As far as I knew...I was an orphan. Now, I get to meet my mom and dad. I'm pretty much terrified."

The look in his eyes led me to believe that Dimitri was fighting internally with himself. He looked sympathetic, but his hand hesitated as he reached for me, finally cupping my cheek and brushing his thumb against the soft skin there.

"I never thought about it like that. My family means the world to me and even though I don't get to see them often, it would be horrible to never have known them. I'm sorry I was making light of it. Is there anything I can do to make you feel more comfortable?"

I thought for a moment before realizing how calm just the touch of his hand made me feel, and I knew what I wanted...no...needed. I didn't know how to ask for it though. So, without saying a word, I took a step closer and wrapped my arms around him in a hug. He returned it automatically , and for half a minute, I just allowed myself to borrow some of his strength.

When I finally pulled back, somewhat surprised that he hadn't pushed me away for hugging him without warning, he seemed stunned but not upset.

"Thanks," I whispered sheepishly. "I needed that."

"Anytime." His voice was soft too, and I couldn't help but wonder if his heart had raced like mine did when he had held me.

When the doorbell rang again a few minutes later, I felt myself tense up again, but not nearly as much as before. "You can do this," I whispered to myself. "Everything will be fine."

"Where is she?" a woman's voice sounded. It seemed fairly composed, but I could hear the slight urgency in it.

"Guardian Hathaway, Rose is just in the other room. Take a seat and I'll go get her."

Eddie appeared in the dining room moments later.

"Hey Rose, your parents are here to see you," his carefree grin faded when he saw my expression. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah..." I whispered breathlessly, my feet frozen in place.

"She'll be out in just a minute, Eddie. Thanks."

Eddie walked back out, shooting one more concerned glance before he disappeared.

"Come on, Rose. You can do this." Dimitri's hand on my back guided my first few steps until I was able to walk on my own.

As we entered the front room, the two new faces instantly caught my attention.

The woman, Janine as they had called her, was a few inches shorter than me with bright auburn curls. She hardly looked like me at all, except for her defined curves. Even those didn't exactly make her look feminine though. Simply standing there, stick straight and at attention, she seemed to be ready for battle. She was hardly the picture of maternal comfort that I had imagined.

The man next to her looked just a bit more like the person I see each morning in the mirror. Our hair was just the same thickness and color, and our eyes were a similar shade of brown. Even our skin tone seemed to be an exact copy. However, that's about where the likeness ended. He had an air about him that screamed 'cocky,' like he had power and he knew it. Just by how he was dressed, you could tell that he had money, regardless of how tacky I thought the clothing was. The gold hoop in his ear just completed the overall getup.

"Rosemarie," the woman spoke to me. "I'm so glad you are okay." I stared at her extended arm, realizing that she was offering me a...handshake? I disappeared off the face of the earth for two years and all she wanted was a handshake?

Not knowing what else to do, I took her hand and she gave it two firm pumps before sitting down. The man sat down too, and I realize that he seems to be watching me with a curious expression.

"Now," my apparent mother continued, "Princess Vasilisa has made me aware of your condition. You have no idea who I am, correct?" She seemed like she was conducting an interview more than anything else.

"No, ma'am." I don't know why, but I felt the need to match her formality. It seemed slightly less awkward than any other option. "I only know what they've told me about you. You both seem vaguely familiar from a vision or two, but that's about it." The only time I remember seeing them was at the funeral I had witnessed years ago. The woman in front of me seemed to be nothing like the same lady who had been crying back then.

"Well, I believe introductions are in order then. I'm Guardian Janine Hathaway. I'm your mother." She gestured to the man next to her, "And this is Ibrahim Mazur, your father."

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Kizim. I've waited a long time."

Between hearing his strange accent and being addressed as Kizim, it took me a moment to register exactly what he had said.

"What do you mean 'finally'? Have we not met before?"

"No, I'm sorry to say we have not. I wasn't around during your childhood."

"Oh..." I said dumbly. "What did you call me?"

"Kizim? It's Turkish. It means 'daughter'."

I nodded, more as an acknowledgment than anything else. Apparently, I'm part Turkish. "So, you two, I'm guessing you aren't married."

The man, Ibrahim, smiled but Janine scoffed. "Hardly," she said. "Your father and I met years ago. I've recently taken a position as his guardian."

All I could think about is how strange it was that my mother worked for my father and there seemed to be nothing more than a professional relationship between them. Though, by the way that I caught my father looking at her once, I thought that he wouldn't mind something a little more.

"If you don't mind me asking, why did we never meet before?" Even though I couldn't remember my childhood, I felt like I had at least some right to know why he wasn't present in it.

"I had business to attend to," He said cryptically and I'm reminded about how Dimitri was less than approving of whatever business my father partook in. "It wasn't suitable for a child to be exposed to. I received occasional updates and photos from your early years of school."

I nodded, then turned back to Janine. "So you took care of me all on your own?" I asked.

For just a second, she looked guilty, but just as quickly as I saw the emotion flash on her face, it was once again gone and replaced by a blank mask. "No. You spent your childhood at St. Vladimir's Academy once you turned four. My own job would have made it nearly impossible to raise you."

What she means is, I would have made it nearly impossible to do her job, I realized resentfully. "So you just left me with the school. I didn't even spend time with you on breaks?"

"Our paths crossed a few times over the years and your teachers took it upon themselves to send me occasional progress reports, but other than that...no. I followed my charge."

I felt my stomach knotting, not with the nerves I had felt earlier, but in a sort of fury. I also felt the bitter sting of tears forming behind my eyes but I refused to cry in front of my parents. I felt an odd form of clarity as I realized that, memories or no, both of these people are practically strangers. Maybe I should have felt comforted by the fact that my situation didn't take a lifetime of happy family memories away from me...but I wasn't.

I stood, and everyone else stood up with me. I didn't think about it too much. Instead, I offered the same impersonal handshake to my mother that she had given me earlier. "Well, it was nice meeting you two. If you don't mind, I'm not feeling too well. I think I'm going to skip dinner tonight." I turned and started walking towards the stairs before anyone could answer.

"Rosemarie..." she chastised in a way that did nothing but add fuel to my already burning anger.

"Rose." I heard several others call out to me as I left, but I ignored them and slammed the door to the room. It was childish, I know, but it made me feel just a little bit better.

– DIMITRI –

I heard the thud of Rose's door slamming shut, and the rest of us looked around at each other, not knowing what to do next.

"Well," Abe suddenly broke the silence, "I think that went better than expected. All things considered, I mean."

Lissa, Christian, Adrian, and Eddie all looked toward him with a mixture of shock and disbelief.

"I can't believe she's acting like a child about this," Janine shook her head in the direction Rose disappeared. "She knows that I didn't have any other choice. I did the best I could for her. She knows what my position entails."

Suddenly, I can feel my own control being tested as my sympathy for Rose increased. "Actually, she doesn't. All she just learned was that she grew up without her parents in her life." I glanced towards Lissa who had a look of concern written plainly on her face. "Princess. May I?"

She understood my request to be excused and gave a silent nod.

As I walked up the stairs, I heard a mixture of crying and a couple of dull thuds from behind a closed door. I knocked a few times and the sounds stopped instantly. A few moments later, the door cracked open and I could see Rose peeking to see who was on the other side. Seeing nobody but me, she opened it a bit wider.

"Can I come in?" She didn't look at me when I asked, but nodded in response.

As she sat down on the rumpled bed sheets, I took a look at her room. The most obvious thing out of order was her desk chair which had been flipped on its side, but when I took a closer look, I could also see clothing strewn about and her pillows looked like they had recently been used as a make shift punching bag. She had been in the room less than 24 hours and while I knew that Rose wasn't the most organized person on the planet, she wasn't this messy. The destruction that I was looking at now was intentional and recent.

After righting the chair, I pulled it over so that I was sitting in front of her. I took one last look around and noticed that everything she threw was non-breakable. She was only creating temporary chaos it seemed.

"Sorry about the mess," she mumbled. "Sometimes, when I get too worked up, I just need an outlet. A physical one. I usually hit the gym but..."

I waited a moment to see if she would say anything else before speaking. "I can show you the gym here. I was kind of hoping to see what you could do anyways."

Her smile grew bright enough to make the sun envious. "Seriously?" she teased. "I've barely been back a day and you're already itching to start training me again?"

"If you'll allow it." I couldn't help but smile back.

She put her finger to her chin, as if she needed to think. "Okay, fine. I'll allow it." A small laugh rang out before she grew serious once more.

"I didn't mean to bail on everyone down there. I just...I just needed some time to think."

"Are you okay?" I was genuinely concerned. Rose's lack of parental relationships had always been a sore spot in the past, but her reaction today surprised me more than the public arguments she had with her mother years ago.

"Yeah. I'll be fine. Part of me really wants to go back down there and yell and scream..."

Yep, there's the Roza I know.

"...but what's the point? Arguments are only productive when you're fighting with someone who cares enough to fight back."

For someone who used to accuse me of 'zen lessons' on a regular basis, she seemed to be coming up with a few good ones herself.

"They care," I insisted. "They aren't very good about showing it, but they do care."

"Really? Then why did they cut me out of their lives? You saw them; they acted like I was a new business partner, not their daughter."

"I can't answer that for you. I can tell you that they were both distraught when you were lost." I was still somewhat haunted by the image of Janine crying and begging them not to call off the search in Spokane. "Your mother isn't one to show emotion, even in some of the most difficult situations. She cried when we thought you were gone forever. For her, that's huge. I think she's spent every day since then creating a wall around her heart so that it can't hurt her anymore. Perhaps it will take some time to break that wall down and believe you're really back."

Rose looked to the side, staring at nothing intently as she considered my words.

"As for your father," I continued, "I think he just doesn't know what to say to you at all. He was by your mother's side as soon as we all reached the Academy, and he hasn't left it since. She might be the guardian, but there's a part of me that wonders who is really protecting who in that relationship. It actually took me months to realize his connection to you. He once mentioned that he had always hoped to meet you, but was waiting until after your eighteenth birthday. As much as I don't care for his... business practices...I think you should give him the benefit of the doubt."

The silence that followed seemed to stretch on forever, but it didn't put me on edge. I could tell that she was deep in thought, and I gave her the time to think. When she finally did speak again, it wasn't what I was expecting.

"You really were a mentor for me, weren't you?"

"Yeah," I conceded, "but I'd like to think that I was more than that too."

Her eyes widened. "Oh?"

In a flash, I realized what I had just said and tried to spin my words in another direction. "I'd like to think that I was a friend to you too. You certainly were one to me." It wasn't the full truth about our relationship, but it was the truth none the less.

"Oh," she repeated. The brief look of disappointment was so quick, I'm sure that I had just imagined it.

"Is there anything else bothering you?"

She took a deep breath, and let it out in a sigh as she ran her fingers through her hair. "Yeah, but you'll probably think it's ridiculous."

I waited patiently for her to continue.

"I always imagined what having a family would be like. Growing up and doing things that normal families did. Simple things really, like opening presents on Christmas morning. Or maybe taking a family camping trip. Heck, I would have settled for family dinners, my mom sending me to my room for breaking curfew, and my dad intimidating my boyfriends."

I couldn't help but think that her father would always intimidate her boyfriends, and most likely intentionally. Her mother would offer a fair bit of intimidation too, I'm sure.

"It was a comfort to imagine these things," she looked almost embarrassed by what she was saying to me. "Realizing that they were never there, well that hurts. I guess a part of me just felt better thinking that there was someone out there who missed me. Someone who wanted me and was maybe even looking for me. If I pretended that someone loved me, then I felt a little less alone."

My heart broke for her. All I wanted to do was tell her that there was someone who had missed her. There was someone who loved her. My world was never the same without her in it. Beyond me, there was Lissa, Christian, Eddie and Adrian. All of them missed her and loved her in their own way. Even her parents loved her and missed her, regardless how bad they were at showing it.

"Rose, you were missed. You are loved. I know this didn't go as you had expected, as you hoped, and I'm sorry for that. But please don't give up just because your parents aren't what you imagined they would be."

"You're right, but it's not just them, Dimitri. It's...everything. All I wanted to be was normal. It's hard learning that somehow my real life, the one that I was born into, is somehow even more crazy than the one that I had been trying to build for myself."

I didn't have anything to say to that, and I wasn't sure there was anything that I could say to make her feel better about the situation. I couldn't even imagine what she was going through right now. All things considered, she was dealing with it pretty well. Upending a chair and tossing some clothing around the room really weren't that bad in the grand scheme of things.

"What do you say we go get some dinner? Christian actually makes a pretty good meatloaf, believe it or not."

She forced a smile, intentionally pushing past the difficulties she was trying to face and focusing on something a little lighter. "Yeah, he's quite the little house wife, isn't he?"

The rest of the evening ran smoother, even if there were a fair share of tense and awkward moments. Rose asked questions about Janine's career, Janine and Abe asked how Rose survived the past two years. Neither were happy to hear about her dancing in Vegas, but Rose shot down their disapproval, reminding them that she did what she needed to do, she was good at what she did, and she wasn't ashamed of it. She made any argument about that situation pretty much mute. By the end of the night, the trio was on good terms. Actually, their relationship was arguably better than before Rose's disappearance, though that wasn't saying much.

As soon as the door closed behind her parents, Rose excused herself for the night and we let her leave without argument. It was clear to see she was emotionally exhausted. We all were.

Author's Note

Do I detect a hint of Romitri? I promise there is more to come, slowly but surely. You guys like slow burn, right? And poor Rose. That family reunion REALLY didn't go too well, did it? How do you feel about Dimitri getting defensive about Rose and being her rock during the storm?

Just FYI, these next few weeks are going to be crazy for me. I should be able to post without issues since I've written most of the story, but if I am late or (heaven forbid) miss my typical posting date, please don't fret. I'm probably trying to find a wifi signal in the middle of nowhere.

Thanks for reading! You guys are absolutely amazing and you really keep me going through the hard days. A big thank you to my ever-supportive beta, Raissa. She is amazing and pushes me and my stories to become more than I ever could make them on my own.

Please take the time to review, favorite, and follow if you love this story! I enjoy hearing from you and I do try to respond to every review that I receive. Have a great week :)