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Dimitri had heard of Rosemarie Hathaway before he’d even met her. She’d been mentioned in a file dropped on his desk, a full page describing the dhampir who happened to be best friends with the now-princess Dragomir. A picture had been attached with a little paperclip of the girls, and he’d immediately noticed her dark eyes that seemed to see through him. One of the guardians that often worked with the novices had told him upon his arrival “Be careful, she’s a wild one.”
Oh, how he’d underestimated her.
**
*
He saw her right away, a figure in dark clothing that moved through the world like a bullet through the air. She’d been graceful and powerful in the way only panthers should have been able to be, and he wasn’t sure if it’d been second nature or Rose’s magnetism that had pulled him to throw himself in front of Vasilisa – a girl smarter and tougher than she looked – and tackle the young dhampir.
Rose teased him about the unicorn, and he held back an eye roll. A sort of electricity ran through him as he stood there, not too far from this stranger who was loud and picked up her friend to make her twirl like they were little girls or long-lost lovers (perhaps they were, in a way), a feeling he’d never thought he’d experience. It tasted of mystery and heat, and Dimitri, always the perfect guardian, decided he would ignore it.
**
*
He did a very poor job of it.
Dimitri tried, really he did, to keep his distance, to focus on the annoyance Rose brought out of him. She was stubborn and careless in ways that drove him mad, but she carried herself with an aura of self-confidence and pure vocation that was hard to ignore. He was like a moth and she the flame; Rosemarie attracted him without Dimitri being able to do anything to resist it. He pretended not to notice how his gut made him jump towards her rather than his charge as they fought Strigoi outside the wards. His heart squeezed as he admonished her for taking Lissa out of the wards at night – the very same heart that had almost stopped beating when he’d realised both girls had disappeared and caught sight of the lanterns – but he told himself it was because he was disappointed in a novice, not because of anything more. That it was all for Lissa.
What a fool he’d been.
**
*
Dimitri struggled to keep away, too, when he caught her dancing on the bar. That was, of course, before he quite literally caught her. She’d looked beautiful in red and black and had fallen in his arms like she belonged there. He’d pretended to ignore Ashford’s stern look, and Rose had fit easily in his grasp as he walked her back to the dorms. He’d wondered then, if maybe he had made a mistake, if there was any way of going back.
**
*
He learned there wasn’t when he caught her sneaking in to talk to Lissa before the ceremony. He heard every word, and realised then and there, he was in this now; whatever this was. He wondered how the axis of his world had shifted so abruptly to rest around two girls he’d barely known a week before, but life had its ways. Perhaps there was no sense or meaning to any of this, perhaps there were just feelings.
**
*
Dancing with Rose changed things.
Her hands on his felt like a burst of energy, and as he picked her up he tried not to relish too much in the feeling of her body in his hands, tried to tear away his gaze from hers. But he couldn’t, wouldn’t; the bubble they were in, a few beats behind the others, was more familiar and truer to him than anything else in life had ever been. He wished the song could go on and on and never stop, he wished he could find a reason to linger.
He couldn’t, but when Rose walked out the door of the bar and found Dimitri in the street, stealing his glass, he saw an opening. His smile came out faster than he could hold it back, and as she joked and scrunched up her nose, Dimitri found himself falling a little harder.
**
*
Up until the Benchmarks, Dimitri had thought he was in control.
Sure, he felt a little warm around Rose, and sure, if he could find reasons to touch her he might some times give in – one, after all, truly did not need to hold a person’s neck to ice their face. But as he hit the bench with a grunt and watched her fight, graceful and deadly, a murderous dancer, Dimitri understood he was a goner.
His heart skipped and his breath quickened as she straddled him and pinned her on the floor, but he was much too proud of her to reflect on any of it.
He replayed their banter the rest of the day, and when he found her later (both to reassure her about Mason and because, well, he had to kidnap her), he was only half-surprised when the Roza slipped past his lips.
Russian was, after all, the language of this home, and she was, slowly but surely, becoming his.
**
*
Dimitri had fought the hardest thing he would ever go through would be losing his best friend, a man he’d loved and sworn to protect.
He’d been wrong.
The hardest thing Dimitri ever did was try to peel Rose off Mikhail. His throat tightened and his stomach knotted as he struggled with the reality there was nothing he could do to appease her, nothing he could think of to take the pain away, he just had to stay here and listen to her sobs as he tried to pull her back – back to him, back to the world; and away from the abyss.
**
*
If God and the Saints existed, they were most definitely trying to break Dimitri during Portugal.
He tried everything not to think of the way Rose had sat on top of him during the fight, or how she’d looked when he’d told him he cared for her after losing Mikhail. He’d been worried her fire would die down, smothered by grief, but instead the death of her friend seemed to have been like throwing oil on it, making the flames leap and grow almost dangerously.
He ached for her presence, and the entire ride to the small village where Mikhail had grown up, Dimitri focused not to reach out for her hand, keeping it tight on the wheel.
Later, he paced around the house to keep himself from going out to meet her, and failed there too. And when she screamed in pain and doubled over, all his instincts told him to bounce and protect her from whatever was making her suffer.
Dimitri kept that feeling and image in his head for a long time afterwards, puzzling out exactly what happened. He didn’t have all the answers yet, but one think he knew for sure: for Rose, he’d found them.
**
*
If kissing Rose was heaven, staying away from her was hell and more.
Dimitri would never forget her face as she leaned close to him back in Portugal, the sea next to them, and asked, You’ve felt it, right? What we could be?
He’d wanted to scream, because of course, of course he had. As she punched him and made blood spurt on his face, all Dimitri could think was: I deserve it, I deserve it.
Every time he ran past the novices’ dorms, he hoped he would perhaps catch a glimpse of her at the window; and every time he did, he regretted it because it forced him to face the deep ache of missing her, and every time he did not, he mourned the loss of her all over again.
Dimitri tried to forget her, to drown her into someone else, to force her away into a neat little box in the depth of his brain, but Rose, forceful in the way she was in all things, always came back; stronger and louder than ever, ready to stomp on his heart all over again.
**
*
Letting her go might have been even harder than trying to keep her together when she’d lost Mikhail. As he kissed his fingers in a farewell she’d never get to see, Dimitri hoped she would perhaps feel it, that it would bless her in some sort of way that would keep her safe and happy, away from all this.
Something told him Rosemarie Hathaway, however, did not run away from problems.
Instead, she ran towards them.
**
*
Watching her appear in the courtyard was like seeing a ghost, like hope reborn. It was mingled with such fear Dimitri could have thrown up, and as he saw Mason evolve around Rose like she was the centre of the universe, it got stained in the green of jealousy.
But when they argued, oh when they fought about pizza and books, Dimitri knew, he just knew, she was all his, in the way he was all hers. Through the haze of the bite, she looked like an avenging angel, and later, as she screamed at him to take Lissa and go, Dimitri was reminded of another time, not so long ago, when he’d wondered if he’d be able to pick Lissa over Rose.
He had his answer now, and it was not good.
He dragged himself and Lissa away, both of them unwilling but resigned, and hung on to the Moroi girl like perhaps she could be salvation. She was a direct thread to Rose, Rose’s strongest wish, and he would not, he shall not, let anything happen to her.
So it made sense when, even later, Rose and Lissa left together in the car. He’d always known that’s how it would end, both girls together, and him left behind. It did not make it easy. Every fiber of his being screamed to go with them, his charge and the girl he was in love with, the two women his world had learned to revolve around.
Instead he did what he must, for that was who he was.
For that what whom Rose loved.
**
*
Dimitri looked at the note Mason had passed to him. It was in Meredith’s neat and slanted handwriting, only three words that meant the world: They’re back.
The entire day, he wondered how no one picked up on how strange he was acting, how they did not notice him act jittery and shuffle from one foot to the other every few seconds, and finally, when he reached the safe house they’d set up, his heart squeezed in anticipation. What if things had changed? What if too much time had passed and he’d forgotten how to just…be?
Dimitri embraced Lissa, who threw both arms around his neck. She gave him a knowing smile and inclined her head towards the door, indicating a small courtyard. He made his way there and saw her hair first, curly and beautiful and shorter than it’d been before.
“Roza.”
Rose turned, a smile on her lips, and crossed her arms. “Comrade,” she said with a salute.
He laughed, his first true laugh in months, and took three wide steps. Dimitri crashed into Rose, and tried to say everything he couldn’t with the longest of kisses; putting all the passion and the yearning and the pain he’d felt, and all of the warmth and happiness that had now replaced it. Rose giggled, and pulled back just enough to look at his face. He traced hers with his thumb, keeping her close.
“It’s good to see you too.”
And just like that, the world was right again.