Hello!

I wanted to try something out. So, I read the Vampire Academy series many moons ago, and I kind of wanted to rewrite the series with my own twists and turns. I know it's probably been done before, but oh well :) Life (and COVID-19) happened, and I let this go by the wayside. Recently, I got back into the series and when I revisited this fanfic, I realized I needed to revise it. Badly.

Basically, the deal is: read and review (constructive criticism only!). I wasn't sure on the rating, so I'm posting it as a T with a strong warning. This might contain some light / implied sexual content.

Okay, on with the story!

Disclaimer: Vampire Academy and all of the recognizable books, characters, settings, and plot lines belong to Richelle Mead, who I can't thank enough for writing such a wonderful series.

Updated: 10.12.2021

As a Moroi royal, Vasilisa Dragomir had a nasty habit of getting a little too wrapped up in herself.

It wasn't her fault, she didn't think. Their society had taught them that Moroi, especially royals, always came first. When they were children, this accepted selfishness hadn't really been at the forefront of everyone's minds, but it had made itself known as they'd all grown up and their destined paths became more divided. And Lissa had thought she'd been better about it since coming back to St. Vladimir's. But lately, she acknowledged she'd fallen back into those old bad habits.

Ever since she'd been rescued from the clutches of Victor Dashkov and spirit had been rediscovered as a new element, she'd been too wrapped up in her own life – her loving boyfriend, Christian, her element, her studies, her status as the last of the Dragomir line – to really pay attention to anything around her.

Especially her dhampir best friend.

Recently, Lissa knew she had been letting her relationship with Rose fall a little by the wayside. After meeting Adrian Ivashkov during their winter break at the ski lodge, Lissa had been incredibly excited to learn from the only other spirit user she knew. Instead of hanging out with Rose, more and more of Lissa's time was spent hanging out in a room in the Moroi student dorm lounge experimenting, comparing, and practicing her specialization (!) with Adrian. Being able to explore this unexplored element excited Lissa to no end, but it wasn't something she could share with her bond mate.

Besides, Lissa reasoned, it wasn't like Rose was sitting in her room alone every night, right? She, their friend Eddie Castile, and the entire senior novice class were preparing for their upcoming field experience. She figured Rose's absence in recent memory was because she was putting in more and more hours in the gym with her mentor Dimitri Belikov, who also happened to be Lissa's guardian. And apparently the laws of time had bent the knee to Rose Hathaway, since the dhampir already spent a ridiculous amount of time each day with the tall Russian man.

It wasn't until earlier that night when Adrian had asked where his "little dhampir" had gotten to that Lissa realized she had absolutely no clue where Rose could be. Thinking back to all of her interactions with her friend that day trying to figure out where she might be, Lissa slowly became disgusted that she'd allowed herself to become so far out of touch with her bond mate that even an answer to a simple question had eluded her.

Sleep evaded her that night as she tried to come up with things she could do to make up for her selfishness and willful ignorance of the other girl. Eventually, Lissa decided to suspend her Saturday night experimentations with Adrian to schedule a standing girls' night with Rose. She spent pretty much every single day with Dimitri, so she might enjoy a break from him (and Lissa could – maybe – get some all-important therapy girl talk going), and Lissa drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

At breakfast the next day, Lissa somewhat ignored the food on her tray as she waited for Rose to show up in the cafeteria so Lissa could tell her of their new standing girl-date. But as the minutes passed, Lissa had grown concerned by her friend's absence. In all the time she'd known Rose (13 years, almost), Lissa had never known the brunette to miss out on breakfast.

Suddenly, the door swung open. Lissa watched as a much more defined Rose jogged into the cafeteria and up to a lunch lady who, seemingly expectant of Rose's entrance, deposited four to-go breakfast wraps and two yogurt cartons in a black lunch box. Just as quickly she'd arrived, Rose turned around and jogged right back through the door.

Looking at the rest of their table, this didn't seem at all surprising to anyone else but her. Was this how it's been for the last month? They were approaching February, and Lissa honestly could not recall Rose sitting down and sharing the day's first meal with them since before winter break.

"Has she been doing that every morning?" Lissa looked at her friends, needing to ease some of her confusion.

Eddie, who sat across from her, looked up from his tray, a piece of bacon quickly slupring between his lips, and moved his eyes between Lissa and the swinging door before he nodded. He didn't seem to think it was odd she had asked this question and waited until he was done chewing and swallowing before he answered.

"Yeah, it's been that way since after the whole thing with the Badica family. She just darts in here, grabs food for her and Dimitri, and then leaves to go back to whatever training he has her doing before first class."

"And they just let her do that?"

Eddie nodded again, glancing across the table to look at Christian with what could only be described as a look. What in the ever-loving Vlad…?

"From what she told me, when I asked her after it happened the first couple of times, the Badica thing had really freaked her out and she wanted to step up her training. Her and Dimitri were already up and at it by 5 p.m. every morning, but they used to finish by breakfast. Now, they just don't even stop for that. One of them will run in for food and we don't see them again until first class. It's worse on the weekends…the lunch lady just hands her food for the whole day, and we don't see either of them until after dinner."

Lissa was floored.

What had started as remedial sessions intended for Rose to catch up to her peers so she could graduate on time had clearly turned into the two dhampir warriors becoming better guarding partners. Consequentially, Lissa didn't see the relationship between the two as mentor/mentee – instead, she saw it as a relationship of equals.

But in her bones, she felt something – and Lissa didn't know what, exactly it was – between the two had changed. The shift in her perception of their relationship from mentor/mentee to one of equals had happened after she had been kidnapped by Victor Dashkov, but after Spokane there was now a new sort of undercurrent to their relationship – one she couldn't quite pinpoint. Lissa tried to think back to their recent interactions for some clues but came up with nothing.

Lissa needed to arm herself with knowledge before she approached Rose. The increased amount of time between the two dhampir guardians could have morphed the relationship, which would explain the undercurrent. But morphed it into what?

Through the next week, Lissa watched her best friend and her assigned guardian with eagle eyes.

Sometimes, in the rare moments she saw Dimitri and Rose together (usually in the hallways, or during the classes her and Rose shared), Lissa noticed the lingering gazes, the way only Dimitri would be able to cheer Rose up just by walking into a room, the way his hand lingered on her spine if he needed to pass her in a doorway and how Rose would smile as her face turned pink. Lissa noticed Rose wasn't as impulsive – didn't let her emotions control her actions and her words as much as she had in the past.

But she never put it all together, denial firmly in place. They're becoming really good friends, she reasoned. When a person spent most of their time around another person, those people become close friends.

While the majority of the bullying had let up after Mason was killed and she'd received her molnija marks, occasionally someone – usually Jesse or Rafe – would say something to get a rise out of her. Instead of responding with something that would have otherwise gotten her in trouble, she just looked at them with a single raised eyebrow until they submitted into silence – something Lissa had seen Dimitri do on more than one occasion. And Lissa would notice Dimitri standing silently against the wall looking on, a sparkle of something behind his eyes, which were focused firmly on Rose.

It was this incident that had Lissa finally deciding to seek out and speak to Rose on this cool, Friday morning.

Through the streak-free glass pane of her dorm room window, the sun turned fiery with rage as it was forced to dip below the Montana horizon for another night. Lissa swung her fuzzy sock-clad feet onto the shag carpet next to her bed and grabbed the pair of warm grey sweatpants – stolen from Christian – that were flung over the back of her desk chair. Slipping a hoodie – also one of Christian's – over her head and stepping into her moccasins, Lissa tiptoed out of her room before quietly making her way down the hall and into the stairwell. Once she got outside of her building, however, she didn't know where she should go first to find her bond mate. Lissa checked the time on her cell phone and, noticing it was 6:50 p.m., decided to try the gym.

After a couple minutes of walking down a steep hill, Lissa finally saw the old gymnasium. It was colored in greys and whites with paint peeling in places it shouldn't and dirt everywhere. Small windows lined the top of the gym and, with every other window open, out came moldy, sweaty air she could smell from where she was standing. Lissa could not imagine anyone wanting to go near the building, let alone train in it for as much as Rose did.

Silently she crept to the door, not wanting to disturb any training going on inside. If Rose was there, Lissa would ask to speak to her; if not, Lissa would make her request known during class. As luck would have it, the door was cracked, and Lissa's curiosity got the better of her and peeped one eye through the open space.

It took every ounce of Lissa's limited experience with meditation to not allow the pure, unadulterated shock she felt coursing through her system pull her bond mate into her head while she watched Dimitri pinning Rose to the wall and kissing her as if his life depended on it.

His shirt was off, Lissa registered, and the band of his black athletic shorts had been pushed low on his hips by the length of bare leg Rose had wrapped around him. The hems of her multicolored compression shorts were raised even higher on her body, as one of Dimitri's big hands was running up and down her thigh – including a little under her shorts. Lissa could see Rose's chest heaving with exertion under her sports bra, and instead of stepping away to let her get air Dimitri just pressed closer and deepened the kiss. Which, in Lissa's opinion, had already belonged in a much more private setting than in a decrepit training gym on the outer edges of school grounds.

Lissa was distinctly uncomfortable, but it was one of those situations where it's so awkward that you know you have to look away, but you can't. One of Dimitri's hands – the one that wasn't currently groping Rose's ass and pressing her lower body into him – moved to Rose's hair before curling the long, luxurious locks around his fingers and gently pulling her head back so he could nip and suck his way down her neck and across her collarbone and back. Her hands, which had been locked around the back of Dimitri's neck, were now grabbing at his biceps, and running down his bare chest. He moved to press them even further into the wall, and the foot Rose had kept on the floor for balance moved to lock ankles with her other foot at his lower back. A slight thrust of Dimitri's hips had both of them sighing in happiness and had Lissa praying harder for her feet to move.

It seemed like God had heard her pleas, as one of the open windows suddenly – and loudly – snapped shut. The unexpected noise caused the lovers (because that's the only thing that made sense to Lissa) to snap back to reality and spring apart, looking every which way before figuring out it the noise had been caused by one of the windows and not by someone discovering them. They breathed deeply, calming themselves down, before laughing lowly.

"Well, I guess we won't try that move again for a while," Dimitri joked.

Rose smiled at him softly, something bright shining in her eyes. "Yeah, I guess not. Not here, anyway." A moment, and Dimitri's smile turned into a grimace of pain.

"Yeah," He turned toward a pile of discarded mats alongside the wall they had been using and sat down. Rose followed, sinking down next to him before rubbing circles into his back in comfort. "Not here."

Another moment.

"This sucks."

Rose always had such a basic way with words, but Dimitri let out a bark of laughter at them, so Lissa figured they summed up the entire situation pretty well. Not that Lissa knew anything at all about this situation, mind you.

"It really does," Dimitri replied. "I wish things could be different. I wish we didn't have to hide."

Rose hummed in agreement, continuing to rub soothing circles on Dimitri's back. So, these two were in some sort of relationship? When in the hell did that happen? "I know. I hate having to hide how I feel about you. I hate not being able to do something as simple as hold your hand in public."

"I'd prefer you to graduate before that happens."

Rose paused in her circles. Lissa felt the air shift to something decidedly un-romantic but just as tense, and she instantly took pity on Dimitri for what he had just brought down upon his head. But Rose didn't go nuclear like Lissa had been expecting – instead, she kneeled in front of Dimitri and, taking his head in her hands, forced him to look at her.

"Petrov told you that – technically – you don't work for the school. Instead, you work for the Moroi Council who is paying you to be at the school for Lissa, which means you're not actually employed by the school, which doesn't make you a teacher. You aren't paid extra for being my mentor, instead you volunteered – however unwillingly – and this isn't a requirement for me to graduate. You don't handle my grades, and you don't handle my discipline. I could walk away from the gym right now and that set of problems would be solved."

Dimitri made a noncommittal noise but didn't actively try to protest. Rose, as is her nature, pressed on.

"As for the age thing, we've been over this. Not that I'm saying the rest of our world won't care about my being 17 when this started, but the age of consent in Montana and in Pennsylvania is 16 and I'm less than two months away from being 18. If we were humans, you'd be at least two years out of college or in grad school and partying it up every weekend at the bars like a normal 24-year-old.

"We're not hiding, not exactly. Petrov knows, and since my mother legally gave me up as a ward of the school and Kirova appointed Petrov as my guardian, she technically has given us permission. Petrov never would have allowed all the extra hours we've been working together if she thought we'd be using them to hook up. She tests me on a weekly basis for improvement, and at this point we're not in a mentorship – we're both learning together how to be the best guardians we can be for Lissa."

The light was gone from the sky, and the fall night quickly chilled Lissa. But Lissa had already been chilled from the scene she'd witnessed and the words she'd heard. How in the literal hell had she missed this? But Rose still wasn't done and got up from the ground to straddle Dimitri on the mat. His strong arms automatically went around her to lock her in place, and he looked up into her chocolate-colored eyes as she softly caressed his jawline.

"We've been taught our whole lives 'they come first.' We've been raised to be selfless while they've been raised to be selfish. We both know we'll never get a shot at this after graduation, so right now is the only time we'll have to really be together. Don't waste it with guilt for a situation neither of us can control."

Dimitri looked at her for a moment, and then molded his lips with hers. Lissa's feet finally decided to move, and the blonde ran (or power-walked) all the way back to her room to reflect upon what she'd seen as she got ready for breakfast. She'd never before felt the kind of guilt she was currently feeling, and she had her own actions to blame.

The time to be selfish was over. She promised herself to make more of an effort with Rose from then on, but she also promised herself she wasn't going to be the one to make them give up what they had and was going to figure out a way for them to do their jobs and still be together.

Lissa refused to bring their bliss crashing down around their heads.

So, what did you think? Remember: constructive reviews only.

Thank you!