We said we'd never come home

- from "Destiny Rules" by Fleetwood Mac

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There's a reason so many fairy stories end with everyone going off to live in a palace. You have to stop the story there, Deryn's learned, because that's where the adventure stops. That's where everything stops.

Palaces are pure dead boring.

She shifts slightly on the chaise longue. The cushions are covered in red velvet and silk, but inside it's the same horsehair stuffing as the moth-eaten sofa in her auntie's parlor. And despite the gilding and fancy plasterwork and Clanker conveniences in Erzsi's Hofburg suite - it's about as exciting as sitting in her auntie's parlor, too.

The compress on her knee lifts a few external tendrils at her movement. She waits for the internal tendrils to start buzzing, too, but there's nothing. About time. Maybe, when the French doctor finally gets his skylarking bum in here, she can convince him to remove the compress altogether.

She picks up her sketchbook (a gift from Alek via Erzsi) and flips through the pages, finding the ones she's been filling with drawings of the compress. A true sign of her boredom, that.

"You're terrible company," she tells the beastie. Worse, its presence holds her to a mind-numbing routine.

Wake up. Dress, in a sodding dress, with the help of a maid. Eat breakfast with Erzsi and her four children. See Alek for five minutes under the guise of his daily courtesy visit to his cousin. Be escorted to the conservatory by the maid and a footman. Sit motionless in the sunlight so the compress can bask. Get escorted back. Eat lunch. Twiddle her bloody thumbs for bloody hours. Dress for dinner, in a fancier dress, with the help of the maid. Eat dinner with Erzsi and her brood. See Alek for five more minutes, unless he has a state event that evening. Dress for bed, with the help of the maid.

Try not to throw her crutches across the room in a fit of frustration.

Sleep.

Repeat again and again, for the longest fifteen days of her life.

At the back of the sketchbook is a collection of the only things keeping her from going completely barmy: the letters Alek slips into her hands every morning.

My dearest Miss Sharp, the first one began, polite as an etiquette book, but the one he gave her this morning opens with a plain Liebchen.

There's no one to see her run her finger over the word and smile to herself like a mooning village lass.

Liebchen,

"When your knee is healed…"

I find myself thinking these words a thousand times a day. The places I mean to take you, the sights I must show you, the food we'll eat - for I know you soldiers march on your stomachs - it is a long list, and only growing longer. I hope that you, who have adventured across the world, can be satisfied with exploring one city. We will be discovering much of it together; I am almost a stranger to Vienna myself. My childhood was predominantly spent in the country, and you know how limited my time has been since taking up the crown.

Have I told you of Konopischt? You would like it, I think, although there are no airfields.

He goes on to describe the castle where he grew up, tells a story about childhood shenanigans which makes her grin, then signs himself, Yours, Alek

That's all written in his usual elegant cursive. But the postscript is a smudged scrawl, as though he added it at the very last moment, folding the paper while the ink was still wet.

I've had the most wonderful idea - I shall tell you as soon as possible.

This squick of a mystery is the most excitement she's been offered since arriving here. She hopes he can tell her today, but it's unlikely, since he's got some military function to attend (Landstreitkräfte, not Luftfahrtruppen, so she's not sorry to miss it).

She wonders where he's keeping the letters she's written to him, the ones she slips into his hands over half-eaten breakfast dishes and snippy wee royals. This morning, continuing a prior disagreement, her letter said:

Love,

You're not to buy a house for me. That's daft. Bad enough you telephoned my ma behind my back and got her so rattled she's threatening to move here. I'll let a flat, like a normal person. Hahn (the maid who stuffs me into dresses every day) says she knows some likely places nearby.

Either that or just move me into your suite and have done with it. You can't force the world to respect me, and at least then I could kiss you as much as I'd like.

Instead of blethering about her childhood, the rest of her letter was a dissection of the current disposition of his Luftfahrtruppen, based on translated papers one of General Uzelac's aides had supplied her. Not very romantic, maybe. But she's rubbish at romance.

Signing off with Yours, forever is about as close as she gets.

The door to the suite opens and a liveried footman enters, giving her a stiff little bow and an equally stiff, "Frau Doktor Blair."

Deryn sits up straighter, instinctively pushing the sketchbook away and reaching for the knife in her skirt pocket. She doesn't know who Frau Doktor Blair is, but it's not Herr Doktor Laurent, and that's reason enough to be suspicious.

Especially because Deryn's alone.

Princes Franz Joseph and Ernst are with their tutors, Prince Rudi is at his walker pilot lessons, and little Princess Fée is spending the day at a friend's house. Erzsi, meanwhile, is off with the Socialists, doing important work for the good of the masses and certainly not snogging that Leopold Petznek fellow.

Her fingers have just closed around the folding knife's handle when the doctor enters. It's a woman. White doctor's coat, black doctor's bag, sensible dark skirt. Unlike Dr. Laurent, she's not wearing a boffin's bowler.

And there's a dog trotting at her heels.

"Good afternoon, Captain," the doctor says briskly, in English, though an accent lilts the words. She sets her bag on the sofa near Deryn's chaise, then turns to her dog and gestures. "Muggins, sit."

Muggins the dog has black fur, with white paws and a white blaze on its chest. It promptly sits, tongue lolling, tail wagging, gazing up at the doctor adoringly. As far as Deryn can tell, it's a normal dog - nothing fabricated about it.

Over the doctor's shoulder, the footman returns to the hallway, shutting the door after him.

The doctor extends a hand to Deryn. "Dr. Mary Blair."

Deryn shakes hands, unsurprised to find the doctor has a firm grip. She seems the type. "Aye, hello. You're not -"

"- who you were expecting, no." Dr. Blair smiles, a flash of teeth in a sun-lined face. "Dr. Laurent is unavailable, and since I was in the area, the job's fallen to me."

Well, that explains the delay, at any rate. "Thanks for coming, then."

"A doctor's job is to serve," Dr. Blair says. There's a wry note to it, like a private joke. She nods at Deryn's compress. "What have its activity levels been?"

"Almost nothing, today."

"Mm. We may be able to remove it," she says, which is music to Deryn's ears. The doctor looks around the parlor. "Is there a sink? Or a basin? I prefer to wash my hands before an exam."

"Aye, the loo's just through there," Deryn says, pointing. Muggins turns its head to track the doctor's movements as she goes, but it's an obedient dog, and it stays put.

Dr. Blair returns in short order, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves and saying, "Good boy, Muggins," on her way to the chaise, which earns her more tail wags.

"New Zealand," Deryn says, having worked out the accent.

Dr. Blair gives her an appraising look as she sits on the edge of the chaise. "You've a good ear, Captain."

Deryn shrugs. "I served with some ANZAC lads during the war."

"I served with the Scottish Women's Hospitals. We do live in a small world." She puts her attention on Deryn's knee, obviously moving the conversation along from war stories, which is fine. Those ANZAC lads had been very brave; they're also very dead. "Let's see to your compress."

The doctor gently presses around the edges of the beastie. The external tendrils wriggle, and inside it starts up a weak buzzing - more a tickle than anything else. She gives a wee tug to the lower part, and it lifts away from Deryn's skin without complaint. Dr. Blair lets go of the compress, looking pleased. "I believe its work is done."

Deryn drops her head back against the stiff horsehair padding of the chaise. "That's a bloody relief," she says, then winces at her own language. "Sorry."

The doctor chuckles. "I've heard much worse."

Serving in the war, aye, she's likely heard every curse ever known to man. A few new ones, too.

Muggins, evidently tired of sitting, lays down and rests his head on his paws. Dr. Blair removes her gloves and snaps her black bag open, rummaging around inside. She draws out a glass specimen jar half-filled with some kind of cloudy liquid and says, lightly, "We have an acquaintance in common, you and I. Dr. Nora Barlow."

Dr. Barlow. The name sends a jolt of memory through Deryn: the lady boffin and her thylacine coming aboard in Hyde Park; those barking inconvenient eggs; the fear of being found out that'd lurked in the pit of her stomach until Dr. Barlow had got off the ship.

Suddenly Deryn is pure dead certain Dr. Laurent didn't just happen to be unavailable today, and Dr. Blair didn't just happen to be in the area.

She looks at Dr. Blair with new eyes. Suspicious eyes, at that.

At least whatever the lady boffin's plotting, it's not likely to end in her death. Murder's too vulgar for the likes of Dr. Barlow, even by proxy. Still, her fingers itch for the knife in her pocket.

"Aye," she says slowly. "Aye, that we do."

This time there's no alert from the footman. The door simply opens, and the person on the other side comes striding in like he owns the place. Which he does.

Alek.

She'd got used to him in borrowed clothes, in need of a shave, tired and travel-stained. In the last fifteen days, she's seen him wearing everyday suits and surrounded by a flock of bureaucrats and servants, looking more like a banker than a king.

Not today. Today, he's kitted out in a military uniform. Hair freshly cut. Boots with a mirror shine. Medals spangled on the jacket's chest. Sash of state from shoulder to hip, gold belt at the waist. Imperial arrogance in every gesture.

Alek at engines ahead full... It's enough to take a girl's breath away.

The doctor has risen to her feet, along with Muggins. She dips into a serviceable curtsey; Muggins merely wags his tail.

Deryn keeps her bum on the chaise. Invalid's privilege.

Alek, imperial mask in place, gives the doctor a cool nod. "Please continue," he says.

Dr. Blair says, "Yes, sir," and goes back to her preparations, laying out a set of steel instruments on the small table beside the chaise.

Alek comes to stand on the other side of the chaise, his hands behind his back and a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth, threatening to ruin that mask. "Captain, how are you?"

Deryn herself is hard-pressed not to grin like a looby. Blisters, it's good to see him, especially since she wasn't expecting to. But he's interrupted his schedule, probably putting himself in Volger's black books in the process, just to make certain her doctor's visit goes well.

She's never said, not aloud and not in any of her letters, that she's been fretting about this. That it's not the compress being removed which has her worried, but everything afterwards.

What if her knee never heals? What if her days of mad adventures are over?

And here's her friend, her love, come to keep her company. Unasked.

"Aye, I'm all right, Your Majesty," she says, because his presence makes it true. She makes a rude gesture at the compress. "Ready to have this gone."

"Then I've come just in time." Ignoring the stricken looks from the footman, Alek fetches one of the spindly-legged chairs and carries it over, settling in beside the chaise and taking Deryn's hand in his.

"You may begin," he tells the doctor, every inch an emperor. Cool and arrogant and commanding. But his fingers tighten on hers.

Forceps at the ready, Dr. Blair glances at Deryn, who nods.

Luckily, the compress is happy to say farewell to Deryn's knee, and its tendrils release with no fuss at all. Dr. Blair is methodical but quick, exactly the way you'd expect a war doctor to be, and within a few minutes, the compress is bubbling in its specimen jar and Deryn is able to wiggle her toes without a swarm of bees giving an opinion about it.

Dr. Blair returns her instruments and the specimen jar to her black bag, saying, "Any physician should be able to handle treatment from here, Darwinist or not. Rest it another week before starting reconstructive therapy."

"Thank you, Doctor," Alek says - this time, not as an emperor. Just himself.

Deryn squeezes his fingers and gives the doctor a smile. "Aye, thanks."

Dr. Blair nods, says, "Muggins, come," and exits as briskly as she'd entered. The dog trots after her, tail wagging.

The footman hovers for a moment longer, but Alek dismisses him with a few curt words in German.

And then it's just the two of them, alone, for the first time since arriving in Vienna.

She turns her head to look up at him. He's faster than she is, though, because he's already dropped to sit on the chaise, and now he cups her face in his hands and kisses her like a drowning man in search of oxygen.

There's no room on the chaise longue, and someone will be along in a matter of minutes, if not sooner, and Alek can't get mussed when he's on his way elsewhere, but none of those facts stop Deryn from hauling him atop her and kissing him back. His weight settles in right where she most wants to feel it.

The train in France was lovely, and this is quite nice as well, but if she doesn't get her lad into a proper bed for some proper debauchery soon…

His medals dig into her chest; the pricks of sensation serve as a counterpoint to the warm, soft slickness of his mouth against hers, the smell of his skin, the sparks of fire where his clever pilot's fingers are stroking the back of her neck.

They break apart, breathing hard, and she smooths her own hands over his jaw and chin and cheekbones, careful not to make a mess of his hair, ending with a tweak to one of his ears (which he likes quite a bit, evidence suggests).

Now she does grin at him like a looby. "Oi, hello."

He grins at her in return, and catches up one hand to press a kiss to the back of it. Daftie. "Hallo, Liebchen."

Instead of kissing him further, she prompts, "You had an idea?"

If anything, his grin gets wider. He sits up and tugs at his uniform jacket, trying to put it to rights. "Yes. A brilliant one, I must say. I've spent most of the day discussing it with General Uzelac, and it should be feasible, although not without a rather large impediment."

Either he's stalling to taunt her, or he's spent too much time making kingly speeches lately. She gives his red-and-white sash a quick pull to straighten it, while ordering, "Out with it, then."

"A Women's Special Air Auxiliary," he says in a rush. "A thousand soldiers to begin with. It will serve as the model, I hope, of a new way forward for the Continent."

She stares. No wonder they liked each other straightaway; he's at least as mad as she is. But the very idea makes excitement start bubbling in her veins. "And I'll be advising you on it?"

"You'll be in command," he says, as though it's so obvious he needn't have said it, and that's what makes her think Oh, lad, I do love you. "Is that… Should you be interested in that?"

"Oh, just a squick," she says. Then she laughs. Delighted. "Barking spiders, Alek! That's brilliant. Just Austro-Hungarian girls?"

He shakes his head. "It would be open to any and all nationalities."

"Aye, it would have to be, with me at the helm. Makes it less odd."

"Many will no doubt find the entire venture odd." But he's clearly delighted, too, over her reaction. "There's an airfield and barracks the you can take over; they were used for training during the war, and won't be needed now. However - this is the obstacle - Uzelac insists the Luftfahrtruppen can't spare any actual aircraft."

"Bollocks."

"Yes, but I don't see a way to press the issue."

Deryn frowns. Alek's right; now's not the time to get high-handed with the military he'll need to support him in the event of another coup. It'll be difficult to train a full regiment of airwomen without any sodding aircraft, though.

She's just about to open her mouth and say so when something at the corner of her eye catches her attention. A white rectangle - an envelope. It's on the little table where Dr. Blair had set her instruments.

"What's that?" Deryn asks, stretching over and plucking it from the table. Maybe it fell out of the doctor's bag? It's not one of Alek's letters, nor hers. They don't use envelopes.

Any thought of it being accidentally left there vanishes when she gets the thing close enough to examine properly. Across the front, it says Midshipman Sharp in bold script.

"It's… for you?" Alek asks, not so much confused as suspicious. Wary.

"Aye, and I'll bet I know exactly who it's from," Deryn says, cross. "Barking meddling boffins. Or d'you suppose the British ambassador didn't tell anyone what I said he could shove up his arse?"

His umbrella. But that had been after a long conversation where he acted like she hadn't any brains in her head. Then he'd all but called her a whore and insinuated Alek had poor taste for wanting her.

Pillock. He was lucky she only threatened him.

Alek takes the envelope and turns it over in his hands, then holds it up to the light. There's more than a single sheet of paper in there, that's for certain. "Is it something bad, do you think?"

She sighs, resigned. "I reckon we'll have to find out."

He gives the envelope back to her, and Deryn uses her pocketknife to slice the top open. When she shakes the contents free, two pieces of paper fall out into her lap, along with a photograph.

One paper is a letter. The other is tracing paper, folded into a tidy rectangle, the picture on it reduced to a jumble of random lines pressed together. She decides to start with the photograph.

It's an airbeast, tucked safely inside a hangar, although the poor creature has heavy scarring along its side.

"Blisters!" She squints at the black-and-white image, wishing it was larger. "What happened to you, beastie?"

"Perhaps the letter might reveal that secret," Alek says, dry. "Perhaps it might, in fact, tell us everything."

She makes a face at him; he laughs and presses a kiss to her cheek. Then she holds the letter so they can both read it at the same time.

Dear Miss Sharp,

Please find enclosed plans for the decommissioned military airbeast HMS Salamander, which I expect will soon be yours. It is currently moored in Portsmouth, having been damaged late in the war. I have received a full report on its condition, and while its wounds are extensive - as you have no doubt noticed - I am comfortable in asserting that it is capable of many more years of service.

The next bit is a dry recitation of facts: the airbeast's fabricators, its specifications, when and where it hatched, when and where and how it was injured, the course of treatment recommended to bring it back to fighting strength. Fascinating stuff to Deryn; probably less so to Alek.

The letter concludes with:

You have already been approached on behalf of His Majesty's government. You owe that pack of incompetents nothing. They, however, owe you, and I believe the Salamander to be an adequate initial payment. A friendly word or deed from the emperor should suffice; grand gestures are not required.

You need not reply to this letter.

Yours most sincerely,

Dr. Nora Barlow

Alek takes a few moments longer to finish the letter, frowning the whole while. "Who is Dr. Barlow?"

"A fabricator," Deryn says. Instead of adding And a thorn in Middy Sharp's side, she adds, "Charles Darwin was her grandda."

His eyes widen in surprise. "You know the most unexpected people."

"She's every bit as tiresome as Eddie Malone, trust me."

He returns the letter to the envelope, and she unfolds the airbeast's blueprints. It's a large sheet, the tracing paper is, and rather than spread it across her legs, she takes one corner and he takes the other, and they hold it up in front of them.

HMS Salamander is printed across the top of the tracing paper in tidy draftsman's letters. The rest of it probably looks like gibberish to him, but to her…

"It's a beauty," Deryn says, looking at the photo again. "Bit old, and that scarring's going to make it trickier to steer, but Dr. Barlow's right. It still has a lot of fight left."

He gives her a dubious glance. "I bow to your expertise."

Deryn folds up the blueprints again and puts them away. The photograph she keeps out, the better to wave it at Alek. "D'you know what it'd be perfect for?"

The smile that spreads across his face is slow, wide, and lights his lovely green eyes with mischief. "Perhaps a Women's Air Auxiliary?"

"Might be nice gesture of friendship."

"Providentially so. Is that your opinion as my air combat advisor?"

"As the commander of your regiment."

"Ah, yes, the commander who's going to allow me to pay for the flat she'll need whenever she visits Vienna -"

"Get stuffed, mein Kaiser."

It's not the easiest thing, to kiss while you're both laughing, but they manage it.

One thing's spoiling the moment, though. She pulls away to point out, "I'd be leaving you here."

Alone, in a place so dull she's desperate to it escape after two weeks. He's been trapped in palaces and castles for years, to the point he hasn't even had a good wander around the capital city of his own empire.

She needs to fly. But - she also needs Alek to be safe and well and happy.

He says nothing for a long moment, merely studies her. Then he says, quietly, "You saved my life, my throne, and my sanity. Let me give you your dream."

Now it's her turn to study him. Their eyes meet and hold for a long, long moment before she nods.

"And a flat on the Ringstrasse," he says, and kisses her again while she's sputtering with indignation and laughter.

They're still kissing some minutes later when the footman raps on the door and calls "Eure Majestät?" through it.

Alek draws back and swears. As well he should - his hair's been ruined, there are creases in his sash, and two of his medals are askew. Deryn's shirtwaist is mostly unbuttoned, while her skirt has migrated up around her thighs. Considerate of that footman not to barge in.

She hurriedly helps to get his uniform squared away, because if the footman is daring to knock on the door, they're only moments from that Volger kicking it down.

As she gets her own clothes more or less where they ought to be, she says, "You know, captains don't lead regiments in Britain."

"No," he says, running his fingers through his hair to straighten it. It's a vain attempt, but she likes him better rumpled. "Nor here."

"So I've made colonel in a month." She grins up at him, happiness so keen it could slice her to ribbons. "Not too shabby, aye, love?"

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Notes: When I tell you that this one, specific chapter fought me for two years… I am not exaggerating. I think I'm on complete rewrite #10? 11? Maybe 12. Only one line survived every revision: Alek at engines ahead full... It's enough to take a girl's breath away.

Anyway, the end is now in sight! One more part and then the epilogue.

Shout out to Prince Rudolf, who died in a motorcycle racing accident in 1939. He was openly anti-Nazi, which we love to see.

Meanwhile, the baby of the family, Princess Stephanie, died in 2005, at age 96. She and Erzsi did not get along. (Something something history repeating itself.)

Erzsi married Leopold Petznek in 1948, pretty much the second her divorce to Otto was granted. Leopold was already married when he met Erzsi, but his wife was institutionalized due to mental illness; she died in 1935.

Finally, Dr. Mary Alice Blair was a pioneering anesthetist, and she really did have a dog named Muggins who saw patients with her. In 1922 she was awarded the Order of St. Sava by the king of Serbia for organizing field hospitals in Salonika during the war, and then taking charge of 5,000 patients that had been evacuated to Corsica. If you want to meet some more badass WWI doctor ladies, check out Dr. Alice Hutchison and Dr. Caroline Matthews. (Neither of them had a cute dog, so they didn't make the cut for this fic.)