Work Text:
Rose wasn’t sure exactly what had awoken her; the sun filtering through the sheer curtains was still weak, just the first strains of daylight, nice but not strong enough to have bothered her, and the house was still quiet around her. It was early, so early that not even Olena would be awake yet. So early that Rose definitely shouldn’t be awake.
But here she was, stretching with a sleepy smile as she reached across the other side of the bed which was disappointingly empty. She made an incomprehensible noise of protest at that but pushed herself upright and off the bed anyway, rubbing at her eyes as she padded across the room. She didn’t stop to pull on shoes or anything warmer than the t-shirt and shorts she’d worn to bed, because, despite the early hour, the air lacked it’s usual chill.
No one stirred as she passed the other bedrooms off the hallway, and it was so quiet that she might have been the only person in the Belikov house altogether. But Rose had a feeling she wasn’t alone, the same feeling that drew her downstairs and led her into the living room.
Dimitri smiled and set aside the book he was reading when she entered.
“I was wondering when you’d get here.”
The phrasing of his words was strange but it was early enough and Rose was happy enough to see him that she didn’t think about it twice. Instead she practically floated across the room towards him, slipping onto his lap as he wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Not all of us like to rise with the sun,” she grumbled, burying her face in the soft fabric of his shirt.
“You’re missing out,” he teased in response, sliding warm hands under the hem of her top.
She grumbled unintelligibly, making him laugh, and snuggled closer, feeling him duck his head to rest on her shoulder, entwining them impossibly closer so they might never be separated.
“I’ve missed this,” he murmured so quietly that she almost missed it. The warmth of his breath hit her throat and she shivered, thinking over his words.
“Missed this?” she repeated with a snort. “I seem to remember us being in a position not too different just last night.”
Dimitri didn’t answer and for the first time since she’d awoken a sense of unease started to slither through Rose’s veins. She shivered again, feeling cold now, and leaned back a little so she could catch a glimpse of Dimitri’s face. But he kept his head down as if he could bear to part with her.
“Dimitri,” she said, and he finally drew back so they could see each other.
His expression was sympathetic, even a little sad, and the discomfort in Rose grew.
“What?” she said, the question coming out sharper than she’d intended. “Why are you looking at me like that?” She’d always hated feeling like she hadn’t been let in on something, almost as much as she hated seeing pity in people’s eyes when they looked at her.
Like the way Dimitri was looking at her right now.
“You have to wake up, Roza,” he said gently, before she could ask again.
Rose laughed, the sound false to both their ears. “What do you-”
“You need to wake up now,” he said again and pressed a tender kiss to her forehead.
A kiss Rose swore she could still feel as she woke, panting and bolting upright, in the dark room of the Belikov house. She looked around, chest rising and falling rapidly, convinced that she would find him sleeping beside her, ready to pull her into his arms and whisper sweet comforts when she told him she’d had a strange dream. But the bed was cold and empty and undisturbed.
Feeling sick and not wanting to believe what was slowly dawning on her as the last vestiges of sleep slipped away, Rose flew from the bed, racing out of the room and down the hall, making more noise than was probably considerate to the other sleeping occupants of the house. But she didn’t care as she took the stairs two at a time, not when she had to see.
She skidded into the dark living room and her eyes fell on the armchair where she was sure Dimitri had just sat. The empty armchair. The mundane armchair that she’d walked past countless times since she’d come to stay at the Belikov house. The armchair that now felt as painful to look at as the mouth of that cave where she’d seen Dimitri falter.
The small seed of hope that Rose hadn’t even realised was preparing to bloom in her chest withered and it felt like Rose was dying right along with it.
She clamped her hand over her mouth and the sound that was threatening to emerge from her, something wounded and loud that would surely wake the others. Rose didn’t want them to see her like this and she didn’t want to explain how easily she’d been duped into believing, if only for a heartbeat, that she might have Dimitri back.
She stumbled blindly out of the room and found the back door, finding the handle through the haze of unshed tears and stepping out onto the back porch. She tripped down the stairs and sank onto the grass, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking back and forth a little to try and keep the sobs at bay.
It was painfully difficult and she felt as though the hole that had been in her chest since losing Dimitri was splintering and widening with every passing minute but eventually her silent tears eased and the sobs wracking her body passed. In their place a desolate sort of emptiness settled over her.
Without Dimitri or Lissa she was lonely, desperately so, she realised. She already loved the Belikov’s like a family, but they had their own pain, their own grief, and she loathed to burden them with hers as well. She wanted to talk to Lissa. She wanted to talk to anyone. She wanted to talk to Dimitri.
The thought nearly brought her back to tears.
In the movies they always went to their loved one’s grave to do this, but there had been no body for the Belikov’s to bury of course, and no headstone bearing Dimitri’s name in the little cemetery attached to the town’s church. So Rose just tilted back her head and spoke to the stars, hoping that Dimitri’s soul, wherever it was now, could hear her.
“I dreamt you were alive,” she whispered, fresh tears sliding down her face.
The confession sounded pathetic to her own ears; the desperate dream of a desperate girl. But Dimitri wouldn’t have thought her as desperate or pathetic, she could imagine him tenderly tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and asking her to tell him about it. That was the image of him that she held in her mind as she continued.
“I dreamt you were alive,” she repeated. “And even though when I woke up I knew it wasn’t real, I wanted so desperately to believe that it could be.”
There was a soft noise behind her, an exhale and murmur of Russian, and Rose twisted, heart pounding, to see Karolina standing on the porch.
“Karo,” Rose muttered, turning back around and hurriedly wiping at her face. “Sorry… I couldn’t sleep… I didn’t mean to wake you…”
Karolina didn’t answer, didn’t acknowledge her babbling words, and there was only the quiet crunch as she crossed the grass to sit beside Rose. She didn’t look at Rose, for which the other girl was grateful, but looked up at the stars as well.
“I dream about him too.”
Rose glanced at her, but Karolina didn’t look away from the sky. Her expression was blank, a fair replica of her brother’s guardian mask, but even she couldn’t keep the sorrow from her eyes.
“Mostly memories from when we were children, how I remember him. But sometimes I have nightmares too, about how he is now.”
Rose wanted to take her hand, made an aborted movement almost like she was going to, but held herself back, unsure that the touch would be appreciated. Karolina didn’t say anything further, didn’t elaborate on her dreams, for which Rose was grateful, her own imagination about what Dimitri was now was bad enough. Karolina simply looked at Rose, and she recognised the look for what it was: an offer to unburden herself, if that was what she needed.
“It was stupid,” she said, even as her lips trembled and she had to press them together for a moment. “It was just a moment, a single moment, of what we could have been if he was still… it felt so real.”
Karolina nodded. “I think that’s when I miss him the most. The tiny moments, seeing a book I think he’d like, sitting around the dinner table and feeling like someone is missing, Paul doing something funny and knowing I’ll never get to tell him about it, that’s when I feel his absence the most.”
Rose found herself nodding. It was things like the smell of his soap that she missed, the slight smile that would cross her face when she said something that amused him, the warmth of his touch. The tiny moments that should have made up their life together.
“I don’t know how to survive those moments,” she whispered, feeling herself fracture further with the admission.
There was no hesitation in Karolina’s movements as she reached for Rose, sliding an arm around her and pulling her close to her. It was the touch of a sister, and she wondered when Karolina had started to feel like that to her, even as her sobs started up fresh.
“I don’t know either,” Karolina admitted, stroking Rose’s hair as she held her. There was comfort in Karolina saying she was as lost in her grief as Rose was. “I can only hope that with time they might start to hurt a little less.”
Rose wasn’t sure how long they sat like that, with Karolina holding her so tight that she could feel when the other woman’s tears start to fall alongside her own, but it was long enough that the sun had just started to scrape the horizon and they could hear Olena bustling around the kitchen by the time they stirred themselves. Rose didn’t know how to thank Karolina for the comfort the woman had offered in that dark moment of night, she supposed that besides Lissa, and her mother only occasionally, she’d never had another woman care for her like that. But when they stood and faced each other, no adequate words coming to mind, she saw the solace in the other woman’s expression and found herself wondering if Karolina had needed those hours and their conversation as much as she had.
Before she could force herself to find words, Karolina touched her cheek briefly and said, “He will always be with us, but it will get better, one day.” And Rose knew that nothing else needed to be said as they turned and made their way back into the house.