Note: If you think back-to-school season is stressful and overwhelming for students... then clearly you aren't a teacher. WHEW.

Meanwhile: Eighty chapters! What! That's crazy! And yet... not crazy enough. *cackle* We'll get to 100 yet, me hearties! :D

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She's always known it would take a bit of explaining.

And that's why she never tried, isn't it?

Why she ran off and left the Air Service. Why she ran off and left Alek - though doing both, all at once, nearly killed her.

Why she kept the only letter he sent her, four years ago (read it until she had the words memorized and the paper worn to tatters), but never wrote back.

So she'd never have to face the moment when he looks at her as a girl.

This moment.

She stands, caught flat-footed in the front hall of her ma's house, staring in shock at the young man in the doorway. The housekeeper's let him in, and is now solicitously collecting his coat and hat.

Deryn recognizes him straight off, of course. For all that he's grown taller – and grown a mustache! – he's still Alek.

And those green eyes, when they find her, are every bit as haunted with old sadness as she remembers. Though right now there's a squick more anger than sadness.

"Dylan," he says. An accusation, not a greeting.

She swallows down the panic. He can't possibly think she's a boy; she's wearing trousers, but her shirt isn't tailored to hide anything, and her ma hasn't let her cut her hair since she came home. "Aye, it's me," she says, lifting her chin. "Hello, Alek."

His eyes narrow.

The housekeeper steps in delicately and says, "Beg pardon, Miss Deryn, sir, but will you be wanting tea presently?"

"We might," Deryn says, just as Alek says, "No, I shan't be staying."

"Then why did you sodding come?" Deryn asks, turning on him. It comes out snappish, which she wasn't intending. Blisters! Of all the times to act like a ninny girl… Still, she's not going to apologize. If he means to show up, insult her, and leave, he deserves to be snapped at.

He goes stiff and princely, which doesn't bode well. "I was looking for Dylan Sharp," he says, a bit snappish himself.

"Aye, well, he's not around anymore," she says, heading for her ma's front sitting room.

After a moment, he follows, expensive boots clicking crisply on the fabricated wood floor. "So I see."

He doesn't sound happy.

She glances over her shoulder. "My real name's Deryn."

"I know," he says. He doesn't seem too pleased about that, either. "I did some research at the Herald. Your father's accident - But I'm sure you don't need me to explain further."

She doesn't. Blisters. Those bum-rag reporters.

Deryn plunks herself down on the sofa, crossing her legs so that her ankle balances on her knee. Then she crosses her arms over her chest and arches an eyebrow at Alek, who's standing, looking as if the furniture might jump up and bite him if he tries to sit. "Not as fancy as you're used to, Your Highness," she says, deliberately goading him, "but it's clean enough."

"I'm not concerned about that," he says, scowling at her. He picks a chair and sits. Somehow he manages to make her great-great-granny's spindly wooden armchair look like a throne. "Your mother keeps an excellent house."

"I'll tell her you said so when she's back from visiting," Deryn says. "I thought you weren't staying."

"I've changed my mind." He looks at her – properly looks at her - for the first time. She feels her face heating under the scrutiny, and stares determinedly back.

When did he grow a mustache? She likes the way it looks on him. It's not some great bristled thing like that sodding Count Volger used to have (probably still has), but modern and neatly trimmed. It makes him look more princely yet. And too barking handsome for his own good.

It makes her realize, keenly, how much time's passed. They were children when they parted – pretending to be an emperor-in-waiting, pretending to be a boy. And now they're adults.

She wonders what he sees, looking at her.

"It's true, isn't it," he says after a moment, all the crossness fading from his voice. "You really are a girl."

Well, there's that answered. He sees a barking girl.

She nods, not trusting herself to speak. Alek may not be angry any longer, but right now she's not so certain she won't tell him to get stuffed and challenge him to a fistfight.

He passes a hand over his face. "I don't want to argue," he says tiredly. "I just want to know – was it all a lie?"

His eyes are sad. Confused. Betrayed. She can see clear through the man to the lonely boy she met that night in Switzerland, and it digs a knife into her heart.

Sodding hell. This is exactly why she never told him.

"No," she says, dropping her foot to the floor. She leans forward, trying to catch his eyes so he can see how serious she is. "I was always your friend, Alek. Aye, I lied about being a boy, but I wasn't lying about you and me. That was the truth."

The haunted look returns, along with a bitterness that pricks at her heart. "I wish that I could believe you, Deryn."

That hurts. It hurts double to hear him say her real name.

She chooses to be angry instead of wounded.

"Barking spiders! And you wonder why I didn't tell you before!" She stands up and puts her hands on her hips, glaring at him afresh. "If that clart's all you've to say, then get out of my ma's house before I toss you out on your bum!"

He rises, matching her glare, one hand reaching towards his hip where a sword should be. And that's where they are when the housekeeper bustles in with a tea tray.

"Here you are, Miss Deryn," she says, cheerfully, deliberately oblivious. She sets the tray down on the table and beams at Alek. Mrs. Gibb is a granny herself; when she smiles her face disappears into a cobweb scrunch of wrinkles. She's a bittie wee thing, and impossible to resist. "It's lovely to have you, sir, if I might say so. The miss isn't one to have many gentlemen calling on her, you ken."

"Indeed," Alek says. There's some asperity in his voice, but a smile is threatening, too. He darts a glance at Deryn. "I can't imagine why that's so."

"Aye, exactly," Mrs. Gibb says. Merry. Beaming. Up to bloody mischief. "She's a bonny lass, isn't she – even in those britches!"

"Mrs. Gibb, could you go fetch Bovril?" Deryn asks, desperate to get her out of the room.

"Oh, aye, right away, Miss – but, oh, I've forgot! I've the dinner roast in the oven, and it's fair to burnt by now, I reckon. You might go looking for the wee rascal yourselves?" the housekeeper suggests. Innocent as a nun on Sunday.

Deryn gives her a dark glare. "The wee rascal can stay where it barking is, then."

Alek says, an odd note to his voice, "That's quite all right – I should like to see Bovril again before I go."

Aye, of course he would; he always loved the loris. She remembers how shattered he'd looked, handing Bovril over to her five years ago. She'd tried to tell him he and Bovril'd both be happier if Alek kept the beastie, but no. Dummkopf.

"It was upstairs last," Mrs. Gibb says, bobs a curtsy, and bustles back out.

Alek looks at Deryn, trying for a princely mask and failing. The truth is stamped on his face: he's hopeful and expectant and barking pleased at the thought of seeing Bovril again.

Now she's feeling guilty and a squick jealous. Lovely.

"Come on, then," she says, resigned to the knowledge that Alek's going to be tramping through her ma's house. She leads him up the stairs, taking them two at a time just to show off. He's right at her heels, though, and isn't out of breath when they reach the top.

She wonders if he's still fencing every day with Volger. That's daft; of course he is.

Alek peers around the hallway as they walk down it. Deryn looks too. The wallpaper that's peeling a bit at the bottom over there; the picture frames that're chipped where she and Jaspert knocked them off the wall years ago, squabbling; the place where the roof leaked and left a water stain no one's ever got to plastering over… it must seem pure dead shabby to him.

"How is Bovril?" Alek asks, sounding too casual to be believed.

"Barking fat," Deryn says. She sticks her head into Jaspert's old room and finds it empty. "My auntie's been feeding it all sorts of rubbish."

"This would be the aunt with the enormous cat?" Alek says, trailing behind her.

Deryn snorts. "That's not a cat, it's a ballast stone with fur. Bovril's not that bad yet, but only because I've kept it away from her as much as I can. Don't," she adds sharply, seeing Alek put one hand on a doorknob and start turning. He pauses, frowning, and she explains, "That's my ma's room. Bovril never goes in there – hates the way her perfume smells."

"Ah," Alek says, letting his hand fall.

"It's probably in my room," she says, because it usually is – and that seems to be the way her luck's going this afternoon. She opens her own door, suddenly grateful she's never quite fallen out of the Air Service habit of keeping her room shipshape and Bristol fashion.

Everything's tidied away, and you could bounce a shilling off of the bedsheets. Bovril is curled up on her pillow, snoozing away.

At least until Alek says, "Guten Tag, Bovril!"

The loris pops its head up, blinks those great wide eyes, and exclaims, "Guten Tag! Alek! Wie gehts?"

Alek crosses the room and sits on the bed without so much as a by-your-leave to Deryn. Sodding princes… but she can't be too angry about it, since Bovril is clambering across Alek's shoulders, babbling ecstatically in a fevered mix of German and English, and Alek is grinning like a fool.

"God's wounds, Bovril," Alek says in German, "you have become rather fat, haven't you?"

"Strawberries and fresh cream," Bovril says. "Every day!"

Alek chuckles. Deryn turns slightly away, hiding her smile, and sees that she left the album out. The black book is lying right there on her windowsill, splashed by sun, where Alek might spot it at any moment.

Oh, bugger.

She darts a glance at Alek (he's consumed with Bovril's chattering), then goes and picks it up, trying not to be noticed. She can stick it on top of the wardrobe -

"Is that a sketchbook?" Alek asks. Bovril is perched on the back of his head, ducking him forward. It would be funny, if her heart wasn't in her throat.

Her fingers tighten on the album. "No – well, aye, sort of."

Bovril says, "Sodding Herald."

That earns a swift, suspicious look from Alek, who turns back to Deryn and asks politely, "May I see it?"

She wavers – but there's no good way to say Bloody hell, no! without offending him, so she puts it into his hands.

Bovril cackles; Alek gives it another suspicious look. Then he opens the album.

The first page has a sketch of him that she did on the Leviathan. It's nothing particularly daft or mooning. Just Alek sitting on a crate, looking off to the side, a smile starting on his face.

No, that's not so bad. It's the second page onward that makes her face grow hot.

CHAOS ON THE CONTINENT, the first newspaper article proclaims. WAR OF WORDS IN VIENNA AS LATE ARCHDUKE'S SON MAKES A BID FOR THE THRONE.

Alek turns the pages mechanically. The whole barking story is there. Reported by the Glasgow Herald, clipped and pasted into the black pages by Deryn, who had cried for hours when the end of it was announced two years ago.

ARCHDUKE CHARLES TRIUMPHANT

Because if Alek wasn't emperor, it had all been a waste, hadn't it?

After that, there's only one more page: a newspaper photo from the emperor's coronation, and, pasted right beside it, a drawing she'd done of Alek in the same pose, with the same crown.

That one is a bit mooning.

Alek sits there, one hand on the open book, staring at nothing. "I don't understand," he says, voice hollow.

Bovril makes a plaintive noise.

She swallows and sits on the bed beside him, taking the book from his hands and closing it again. "I'm sorry you're not emperor. Blisters, I can't tell you how sorry."

He shakes his head as if to clear it. "But you never wrote."

Her fingers dig into the black cover, and she forces herself to relax. "No."

"Why?"

Now it's her turn to shake her head.

She can't tell him. The words stick in her throat, crowded out by shame and embarrassment. Five barking years.

What a fool she's been.

What a sodding fool.

He lifts Bovril from his shoulders and resettles the loris into his lap. "Court is an… isolating place," he says in that hollow voice. "Every smile is calculated; no one is truly a friend. And it was doubly worse for me, because of what I was attempting to do. I kept telling myself that you had probably taken up on another ship and were halfway around the world, having adventures, and that's why you didn't write…"

He takes a breath, and she thinks he's going to stop there, but then, unsteady, he presses on: "But - God's wounds, Deryn, there were days I prayed for one word from you."

Guilt cracks her heart; the pain in his voice finds the wound and makes it burn.

Instinctively, before she can think better of it, she lays a hand along his cheek. Shaved whiskers rasp under her palm and remind her anew that they're no longer children.

His eyes go slightly wide, but he doesn't pull away, and after a moment his hand comes up to cover hers.

She takes courage from that, and (before she can think better of it) leans forward and presses her lips to his.

It's not much of a kiss. Gentle and dry and above all brief – it only lasts half a moment. Her heart is pounding like mad the whole while, and there's a roaring in her ears. She pulls back and drops her eyes immediately, just so she doesn't have to see rejection on his face.

"That's why," she says. Unsteady. "That's why I couldn't write you, Alek."

He doesn't say anything. Doesn't move.

"There were days I prayed for a word from you, too." She gives the floor a lopsided grin. "Probably not the same word."

He makes an inarticulate small noise in his throat. "No."

"I'm sorry for it," she says, plunging ahead, confessing all her secrets now. "I know it can't work, and I've tried to let it go. And if you don't – feel the same, it's all right, aye?"

He doesn't say anything. She risks looking at him, only to find him studying her. Wonder and confusion war across his face. Their eyes meet and for a long time (much longer than that daft try at kissing) they simply stare at each other.

Electricity crackles down the back of her neck. For the first time ever, she fancies he might be feeling the same thing. Certainly there's a reason his ears are turning pink.

Abruptly, he drops his gaze. "I should go," he says.

She stands. Lays the book aside. Clears her throat. Aims for a brisk, soldierly nonchalance to hide the sting in her heart. "Aye, I suppose you should."

He stands, automatically resettling Bovril on his shoulder. Now he's gone barking scarlet. "Deryn – it's not – I don't mean – It's only that – I have had a day of surprises, and I doubt that I'm handling them as well as I might."

"I reckon I can understand that," she says. And she does. Anger, panic, guilt, fear, embarrassment, frustration – all in the last twenty minutes. Blisters. It's enough to make your sodding head spin.

So she understands, all right… though what she really wants him to do, instead of leaving, is to grab her up and kiss her until they're both breathless.

Aye, well, can't have everything. At least he's speaking to her. At least she's had this chance to see him again.

They go back downstairs. Mrs. Gibb is nowhere to be seen, though the roast in the oven (which Deryn was dead certain the woman was making up) smells delicious. At the door Deryn gives Alek back his hat and coat, and he sets Bovril on the floor at her feet.

And then he surprises her by pulling her into a fierce, rough hug, his arms tight around her shoulders. "Are we still friends?" he whispers. His breath tickles her neck.

"Aye," she whispers around the sudden lump in her gullet. "I told you - we always were."

He lets out a shuddering breath that she can feel vibrating through her own chest, and draws her closer yet. "Thank God," he says, choked. "I missed you."

"I missed you too." She blinks hard against the tears and puts a hand on the back of his neck, threading her fingers through his lovely hair. Something cold and lonely that's been sitting in her gut for five years finally dissolves. "I missed you too, Dummkopf."

"That's why," Bovril says, sounding immensely satisfied.

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The Glasgow Herald prints the wedding notice two months later.