Vampire Academy belongs to Richelle Mead. I own the idea. Russian will be in bold.

Ch.11 DPOV

"This is fun!" Rose laughed, her dark hair flying behind her as she jumped on the trampoline.

"I'm glad you think so," I smiled, rocking back on my heels.

I had to admit, it was the first date I'd ever been on. And it would probably stay the best date I've ever had.

To be honest, I didn't think I had to ask her father for permission for the first date. He'd overheard Eddie and I's conversation on where to take her, and practically demanded me to explain why, how, and how he'd threaten me with what he would do to me if I hurt her. I had wanted to cut through his speech to tell him that I would never dream of doing so, but I figured that it wouldn't earn me points with him. And so I'd nodded at the appropriate points and reassured that I would never hurt her - "You'd better not," he'd practically growled - and here we were.

We had a day off for ourselves - from nine to nine. I dragged her out of bed at eight, told her to dress comfortably, and waited for her next to the nondescript cars we used to go into human civilisation. We had brunch at a hotel restaurant, and I took her to a trampoline park. I booked it out for the day, and so it was just me and her, and our guardians and the human staff. The look she had on her face when she realized where I was taking us was worth the trouble I had pulling the strings necessary to get the place empty for today. We were alone, and while it made it easier for our guardians to protect us, I was reveling in the fact that it was just me and her, with no chance of girls batting their eyelashes at me or boys hitting on her. I wouldn't put it past hormonal teenagers.

Checking my watch, I gave a small nod to Hans. Roza, being the brilliant person she was, caught it. "Comrade?"

"I'm sorry, Rose, but if you want dinner, we're going to have to run."

Her pouted lip almost made me relent. "I promise I'll take you here again."

"You better," she crossed her arms.

"Cross my heart and hope I die," I said solemnly. "Someday."

Her answering smirk made me wish I hadn't said that.

"Reservation for Belikov."

"Ah, yes. Mr. Belikov, this way," the waiter led us to the table, in the quiet corner that I'd reserved. The guardians lined the walls, switching to the 'seeing but not seeing mode'. The waiter took our coats, and I pulled out the chair for Roza. She smiled shyly as she sat down. I listened with half an ear to the waiter prattling off about today's specials, and admired the way her hair caught the light. "What would you like for an appetizer?"

"Roza?"

She waved her hand at me. "Choose anything you want."

I smiled, and placed our orders.

"You know, I'm not surprised you chose somewhere fancy like this," she stated as soon as the waiter moved away.

I raised a brow. "What do you mean?" I asked, playing unknowing.

She waved a hand imperiously. "We're royals. We're used to getting the best things in life."

"Like your jeans and t-shirt?" I teased.

She flushed. "If I'd known you would've taken me to somewhere so posh, I'd have put on a dress."

"I believe I asked you to wear comfortable clothing."

"I am!"

I waited for her to catch on.

"Oh!" She flushed again, crossed her arms, and glared.

"You're cute when you're angry," I said, going for offhand.

"Can you stop?"

"Stop what?"

"You know, this flirting," she gestured between us.

"Oops, I didn't realise," I drawled, putting on an aristocratic accent.

Luckily, the salad arrived, and she hid her furious blush behind the bowl. I smiled at her, and accordingly started scooping vegetables into her bowl.

We were - well, she was - skipping down the street, our guardians following us when a strong gust of wind blew into us. She giggled and clutched onto me, and I turned my back towards the direction of the wind, taking the brunt of it. She smiled up at me, her brown eyes warm and inviting, her cheeks flushed with excitement. Her hair, for a moment, changed color to a lustrous phoenix red.

That drew my attention. "What does that shade of red mean?"

"Well," her cheeks darkened even more, "I'm happy right now, because I've never been on a date before, but I feel like you've surpassed every fictional male character on a first date; I'm probably drunk on that happiness because I haven't felt so giddy in a long time, and..." She never got to finish. As soon as that gust of wind had abated, storm clouds had gathered and the sky opened up to pour down its contents onto us. The guardians cursed, and two of them ran to get the cars, while Rose threw her hair back and stared up at the sky, not minding the fact she was getting drenched, unlike that Italian Moroi Countess at that outdoor summer party a few years back. She'd screamed. Like a banshee. I had nightmares about her screech for the next months.

Instead, Rose did something astonishing. She shook out her hair from her ponytail and ran her fingers through the strands, and shook them from her fingers. They landed on the ground, and she turned back to smile at me.

And I knew in that moment I was a goner. It wasn't just her smile. It wasn't even her hair. It was the series of moments that led up to this date, the awe I first felt that ball, the uncertainty at our fighting session because I'd never met someone who matched me, her eyes that captivated me and spurred me to become better.

So it was with fear for her life, that I turned and shielded her body with mine from the chips of ice headed our direction. I knew my actions were irrational - our guardians consisted of some of the strongest dhampir element wielders of every element. Indeed, Lionel had the ice turned to water in seconds, but I felt safer knowing that I was in between her and someone else.

And I caught the eye of an assassin - okay, I might be exaggerating a bit, but he (or she) honestly looked like an assassin, all black clothes and masked face, all those things - who had a knife ready.

Okay, multiple that assassin. Another five emerged from between the buildings, all holding weapons.

No, that wouldn't do. With a snarl, I turned Roza so that she was between me and the guardians, who were fighting against the elemental barrage coming at us from that end, and pulled out a dagger from my duster pocket. I palmed the blade, glaring at the men making their way to us. They didn't stop. Well, I tried.

I threw the dagger towards the closest, aiming for his heart. He tried to duck, realised he couldn't, but by the time he tried to dodge, the dagger had cut through his neck. I opened up my magic and, with a small nudge, the dagger came flying back to my hand.

Behind me, Rose's astonished gasp cut through the air.

It was a trick I'd learnt from Eddie, one mastered through countless hours of sweat and exhaustion. I'd always enjoyed a good challenge, and whenever I met up with Eddie at parties, Royal gyms, and crowded events, he'd find the opportunity to ask me how my practice was going. He'd then offer me tips, and finally, after three years of rigorous training, I'd finally got it.

"Rose," I hissed. "Do you have a weapon?"

"Ah - yes," she knelt and pulled out a sheathed blade from her boot.

"Good." I glanced back. "Defend yourself if need be."

I whirled into battle, hitting necks and joints, elbowing stomachs, stabbing thighs and arms. I certainly didn't want to kill them - the first one aside - but to be honest, killing was so much faster than incapacitating.

When all the assassins were on the ground groaning with pain, unable to move, or simply unconscious, I looked back to see Rose staring at the elemental users, who were battling out guardians.

"What's wrong?" I walked up to her.

"They have a dark user," she murmured.

"What?" I looked. Like, really looked. The auras that I normally blocked out shimmered back to existence, and I almost staggered back when I saw the sheer brightness that threatened to blind me.

See, if there was one thing I knew about auras, it was that a person's elements influenced the overall colors of their aura. An earth user's auras was tinted in green, water blue, and so on. Dark users, marked by their shaded black auras, stood out of any crowd with the distinctive color. Only skilled, experienced users of the element (i.e. Rose) could tone it down so that their second element shone through. Clearly this user was a novice - untrained with the correct use of his element. However, his existence alone was worrying. Whoever these assassins were working for, they clearly had had the money and time to put together this ambush, with a dark user.

Even as we watched, the dark user snapped his fingers and knives from his comrades' sheaths tumbled towards the our guardians. Half of them clattered to the ground, and those that remained in the air missed the guardians. At first I thought his control over the element was weak, until I heard Rose's sharp breath.

I looked her way and saw her fingers twitching, her eyes narrowed in concentration. Oh dear lord, she wasn't thinking of doing -

The knives picked themselves up from the ground and headed towards the assassins.

Well, too late to stop her now.

I kicked my spirit into action, making illusions of our guardians. As the guardians started moving away from their doppelgangers, I erased the assassins' view of the real people, and they started hacking at empty air. Our guardians stepped back and stared at the seemingly-gone-made assassins, with various expressions of bafflement, before training kicked in and they started knocking them unconscious.

Instead of leaving the dark user to the guardians, Rose crouched down and snapped her fingers. Shadows, dark and writhing, circled his wrists, ankles, looping all over his body, until only his face was the only part of him that wasn't covered in darkness. She ripped his mask from his face -

And a scarred, scowling face greeted both our eyes. The scars in question? One dragged down his cheek, another across his forehead, countless others that were scattered across his face. The eyes that stared up at us were filled with the hardness of someone who had gone through a lot - I knew that look. I'd seen it in countless dhampirs' eyes - a look that embedded itself so deep into their faces they couldn't get rid of it if they tried. It was a look born from hunger in the ditches, from different kinds of trauma experienced throughout their formative years, from ignorance, the bias and racism that even I, as a royal, couldn't escape. I tried to help those I found, either by forming more communities that supported each other, or giving them money, helping them find employment in the human world when the Moroi turned them out. It wasn't easy being a dhampir. I always knew that, but it was times like these, when I saw what became of those who weren't lucky enough to get out, those who became so desperate they were willing to do anything to get revenge, or just to get out.

"What's your name?" I asked.

His blue eyes glowered at me.

"You know what I can do," Rose said next to me. His focus switched from me to her, and she continued. "I could break into your mind and wrest answers from you. But I'm not going to because I have a feeling you've already been through a lot. Everyone should have a choice, whether it's how they respond to a question, or something major like choosing a new path in life."

His eyes softened a bit, and then he opened his mouth. "Ryan. My name is Ryan Aylesworth."

After that, we learned a lot. Ryan was an American dhampir, whose Moroi royal father had abandoned his pregnant mother, who had followed said Moroi to his homeland in Russia. Ryan's mother had subsequently ended up at a commune, and after she gave birth, she'd sold her services, body, blood, to whoever could pay her, to keep her son alive. That, coupled with the fact that she wasn't a native Russian, had led the other women at the commune to avoid her. She'd worked herself to the grave when Ryan had been fourteen. Bitter and resentful, he'd trained himself to become a warrior, and now worked for anyone who paid him enough, just so that he could track his father down and make him suffer.

Unfortunately, Ryan's situation was common - very common. In the Moroi world, the only jobs that dhampirs could have were at Guardian Corps, being a servant in a dhampir royal household, or becoming a blood whore. Being a blood whore was considered the lowest of the low. Working at Guardian Corps, the center of all guardian work, required a diploma from an Academy. The Moroi had decided that unless a dhampir had trained all their life to become a guardian, they were not accepted. Being a servant was limited as there were only so many royals. Of course we could work in the human world, but it made us an outcast in the eyes of Moroi society. And then we had to keep the secret.

"So why are you here, Ryan?" Rose questioned softly.

He started to speak - and then he started choking. The strangest thing was, as soon as he stopped trying to tell us, he breathed normally again.

A spell. It had to be.

"Don't worry," I told him. "We'll figure it out."

Relief shone in his eyes - and then he started wriggling in his ropes. "Can I be free now? I swear on my magic that I won't hurt you, or try to flee. I'm happy to come with you."

Hans, who'd come over, raised a skeptical eyebrow at that. "Why?"

"You're the first people who showed me kindness, other than my mother... especially after I tried to kill your guardians," he smiled sheepishly.

"That's fine, Ryan. You were under orders, weren't you?"

"Yes, but -"

Rose snapped her fingers again and the ropes disappeared. Hans tensed, like he was preparing to subdue Ryan incase he went back on his promise, but Ryan simply stood up and glanced around. "Ok, so where am I staying?"

"Thank you, Comrade, for the date," she mumbled softly, her head on my shoulder, my duster covering her like a blanket. We were in the backseat of one of the vans, and we were just returning to the palace.

"Why? It ended horribly."

She chuckled and twisted to look at me. "No it didn't."

"There was a battle, Roza. You could've gotten hurt."

"I would've healed."

"Don't joke with me, Rose, please. I messed up -"

"How?"

"I should've asked the guardians to make sure no one was on that street before I took you there." I rubbed my hands over my face.

"Hey, you had no control over that," she countered. "Whoever ordered them to attack us decided that, and we simply encountered them. Decisions affect everyone's life. I could've chosen to not go on this date with you. You could've chosen to spend today with your family. But because you, no, we, chose to, we're now here."

"Since when did you become so wise?"

"Since I met you."

AN: Hi guys, it's been a while since I touched LITD. More than a year, that's for sure. Yes, I'm alive. No, I did not catch a disease, cancer, or get pregnant, etc. I do not even have the excuse of STUDYING, even though I really need to if I want to get into a good school (which I DO). What I have, is just this new chapter and apologies. I did not feel like writing this past year, and sitting down in front of my laptop did nothing to help. Instead of making me focus on LITD, my brain only stuffed more ideas for different fics into my head. But then I realised that it's 2024. If you want to, consider this my new year's present / Christmas present to you.

As always, thanks for reading, and commenting if you want to, and thank you to the ones who followed, and continued to read, from the first day this fic was posted.