“ hey, don't do that, ” rose says gently, leaning closer. this, unlike an answer to his question, comes immediately — though not because of any unwillingness to respond. perhaps her silence had been misleading, but bellamy had started backing up before he’d even finished talking, long before she had a chance to start. there's an unsteadiness to his tone that bothers her, and she’s no stranger to the way demons trick their way into an advantage when exhaustion dull your senses. the shadows around his eyes reveal him to her, a more vulnerable version that hasn't yet strapped on his armor for the day. she instantly responds to that, tenderness softening her features as love colors the gentle reminder.   “ we don't do that, remember ? ” 

they don't pretend for each other, she means — don’t deny themselves the space they need to feel, for their feelings to exist and matter. there are moments like these when one of them still needs additional prompting, encouragement, but for the most part they’ve made an impressive amount of progress, enough that she knows that whatever growing feeling that’s responsible for how he tries to brush this off is causing quite a fuss. 

it makes her think that when he tries to pocket the words before she’s had a chance to really look at them, it’s not the first time he’s tried to shove them back down. 

and as her thumb lightly traces the knuckle of his, she wonders if she’s somewhat culpable — not the direct cause of so much as related to, perhaps amplifying. he’s given her plenty of examples, each of which have been responsible for their fair share of grief and agonizing, but what separates that last one from the rest is that the words belong to her rather than him, are the result of fear that had been her own. waiting for zeus and his lightning. she can’t help but feel he’s revisiting old memories, one in particular she’d tried for so long to cast out of her mind. it doesn’t frighten her like it might have once, but it does sadden her, the idea that in some way or another she may have been the cause of doubt. 

so no zeus sending down lightning bolts, huh? in the moment she’d simply been trying to lighten the conversation, but she can recognize now that while she hadn’t been afraid of some vengeful god sentencing bellamy to death from the safety of the clouds, she had been afraid of something. i don’t want to lose you. to a lightning bolt or anything else. someone.  “ i don’t think zeus was who i was afraid of. ”  a hand lifts to tuck a black curl behind his ear as she says it, lingering for a moment at the curve of his cheek. the admission is calm, simple. no, it wasn’t zeus she feared. it wasn’t some god neither of them were even half certain they believed in. it wasn’t the weather, wasn’t even entirely her own bad luck. 

it was dimitri. in a way far more terrifying than any physical threat, because she had no defenses against him. while very familiar with what it is to be hunted, she’d had no idea what to do when what sought to destroy her found its way into their bed, made itself comfortable in her thoughts and learned to feast on her heart. the delivery doesn’t suggest some recent realization, nor anticipate surprise — rose has known this for quite some time now, and bellamy knew long before that. at least to an extent, at least more than she did. 

he could recognize in a way that she couldn’t what was happening, and she reevaluates how much of what she’d believed then that she still agrees with. it’s not the fear has gone away, exactly, but it’s different now — less catastrophic. it doesn’t paralyze her, and she doesn’t think lying here with him is tempting fate. she’s trying to believe that happiness isn’t the kind of thing that runs out, that it — much like the bad — comes and goes. it’s not fair to herself to think she has anything to do with that, and she’s come a long way from the girl who was so terrified she was going to be the end of him she couldn’t breathe — who clung to fear of herself because it was preferable to fear of someone else.  “ i don’t believe that anymore, ” she adds gently, and it’s true. she doesn’t feel like dimitri is some dark cloud looming over her that is going to invade her life and rip them apart anymore, like he’s in her skin and she can’t claw him out. 

“ i couldn’t really enjoy it when lissa and i ran away. i missed mase and eddie and i was so scared all the time that we were going to run into strigoi or the guardians were gonna find us or victor would. ”  or whatever lissa was certain was hunting her would, since they hadn’t known it was victor at the time.  “ but it wasn’t because couldn’t understand the appeal. you know, of running away, being someone else. living a different life. ”  

she squeezes his hand, thinking of all the things he just mentioned.  “ i know i’m not really the live on a deserted island or in a ghost town type, ”  rose says in a light tone, picturing some reality in which they and everyone they love live in a bubble away from everything. she knows herself, she’s saying, is well aware that she's the kind of person that needs activity, needs to feel like she has purpose. and if the lack of purpose involved in mundane life didn't kill her, it's likely the boredom would — and still she believes what she’s saying.  “ but if it meant i got to wake up with you, and go to bed with you, and spend every day with you, that our family was safe, that you were safe... i could deal. ”  she wouldn’t need anything else, she means, so long as she had that. her tone softens then.  “ i wish we had that. ”

“ i wish our lives were different sometimes. ”  it feels like it’s taken her a lifetime to be able to say that out loud, and even though she can’t think of a single reason why she should feel guilty for that, it still feels almost innately selfish. when she recalls the last time she wanted to admit that to him, the very night he’d referred to, though, she’s able to find something good beneath that knee-jerk reaction to feel ashamed: pride. she’s proud of herself for being able to say this now when she couldn’t then. what comes next is soft, like she’s already sure he understands what she’s feeling.  “ feels kind of wrong to think, huh? like it’s.. selfish or something. and i don’t even know why. it’s just... instinct. ”  an instinct of hers she’s realizing she no longer trusts. 

no one knows like a dhampir does how a body can heal. they routinely push themselves past their limits like the end of the line is the only air they have to breathe, and of course, most of the time it’s true. she can tell by the way lissa frets over each and every cut and contusion that they’re not the same – and that’s not to speak ill of lissa, not even to say she doesn’t adore her for how she worries. lissa’s concern will always warm her heart. they’re just different, different because rose knows her body can break and climb back out of bed tomorrow just to do it again. she never has to worry about that; it doesn’t concern her that it feels on the verge of wearing down to nothing at all. dhampirs heal fast, and she’s no exception. but lissa can’t understand that, not really, not all the way down to the spine of it, so she’s careful to keep her shoulders straight, lest she worry her more. lissa lives in a world where bumps and bruises are catastrophic. rose lives in a world where bumps and bruises mean you’re alive. 

and bellamy lives in that world too. bellamy knows, so she doesn’t need to hold herself so carefully anymore. and then he’s holding her, so she doesn’t have to hold herself at all. 

no part of her was wishing for anything else when she was in lissa’s arms or christian’s or laurel’s or the rest of their family’s, but as bellamy’s arms wrap around her, she can’t help but feel like she was waiting for this, and waiting a long, long time. waiting for all of the tension holding her together – holding her upright – to melt away so she could finally, finally rest, but mostly for his arm around her waist with such hardiness and clarity that she knows for certain he would continue holding her up should her own strength fail her. how completely his body envelop her, taking it inside his for protection and comfort as if it had never existed separately. 

and his smell. as he breathes her in, she’s doing the same, deeply inhaling every detail of his presence and exhaling the rest – the fight, the trials of the last day and a half, the fear and exhaustion. though a little sluggish to respond for no reason other than exhaustion, quickly after does she reach to pull him closer and closer, almost as if asking for more when there’s none left to give.   “ you were worried about me, ”  rose accuses in a too delighted, too satisfied tone even though the way she presses herself to him suggests she needs no confirmation, even though what’s happening between them now clearly indicates they’re far from the stage of denying anything. of course he was worried, and if she were in his position, she would be just as. 

it’s a fun thing to say nonetheless.  “ sorry, ”  she says in a gentle voice before it becomes humorous.  “ busy saving the world and stuff, you know how it goes. ”  it’s not without sincerity, though – she does wish she’d been able to call, she would have called if she could. she sinks into him even as she jokes, feeling a bit like this moment and their days in the sun aren’t so different – she’s still trying to soak up as much as she can of whatever is touching her, be it the sun’s light or every part of him she can reach. rose holds as long as she can, perfectly content to be held by him like that for the rest of her night. the rest of her life, maybe. 

probably. she just barely stops herself from whining when he pulls away, tempted to reach for him again. her guardian senses are still working too well for her to not notice the people behind them watching, but she can’t bring herself to care.  “ it’s good to be safe. ”  though holding to her teasing tone before, the admission is almost a whisper, one whose depth could compare to that of an ocean’s. it’s no coincidence that she says it as her hands lovingly squeeze his shoulders in response, overwhelmed by his warmth. damn bellamy blake and his forehead kisses. how is she expected to handle that? the heaviness of everything she’s endured is all that keeps her from flying right away and making a bed on a cloud made of bliss. and it does so just barely.  

“ okay, ”  she says very softly after a suspiciously long period of staring at him with warm, warm eyes, far too bright for how trying it’s all been. her hands slip down his arms, squeezing one last time before reluctantly stepping back... 

there’s no backdrop, no beginning or after, just bellamy — and she’s not even sure how she knows it’s him, just that she does. there’s not a whole lot of recognition going on, just blind feeling. she doesn’t have the presence of mind to look up to see his face or down to see his hands, but she’s sure nonetheless. she’s warm, she’s safe, and so she’s sure. 

and as outside forces intensify their attempts to reach her, she burrows deeper into what she can salvage of the haze — and in the real world, the covers on bellamy’s bed as if they’re capable of providing her sanctuary from her own sentience. she clings to the sensation of dream bellamy, hoping to drown out the noise persisting just outside her consciousness, gradually moving closer. the call’s just a ring short of going to voicemail when her hand finds her phone in the bed, and it’s a miracle she doesn’t accidentally hit decline while in the grueling process of trying to blindly answer it ( or at least make the ringing stop ), a good portion of her still searching for the all-too-welcoming blur of quarter consciousness. 

she expects that to be the end of it – i love you, too. never does she assume something is going to come after, and she’s taken off guard when it does, still softly smiling to herself when he begins to toy with her hand, fully reclaiming her attention. it hadn’t drifted, exactly, just.. softened as she thought of other things. as she sat in the living room of this love with a blanket wrapped ‘round and a fire nearby to keep even her toes toasty warm and thought of another, recalled a house with a mattress too stern to give into her weight and an emptiness that occasionally haunts her still. the windows are still so clear to her even now, shut tightly enough to chip at the paint. to preserve heat, she imagines, keep the cold from getting in, but it always seemed the opposite – as if the chill was instead trapped inside. dimitri never bothered buying any curtains, and the absence of them felt almost cruel. 

she should’ve been glad for the sunlight that slipped through, but in a show of uncharacteristic pessimism, rose could never think past the glass that stood between her and the light, how wide the barrier seemed, how in the beginning it was so clear she could have reached through it for the sun and cut her hands forgetting it was there and how once she was already bleeding she had to squint and strain to see through it. it doesn’t bother her so much to think of it here, strange as that may seem – she’s plenty warm, and if she wants the sun, all she has to do is walk outside. the second must have been when it was dimitri’s she was expected to return home to, but the thought just hadn’t occurred to her then. nothing was trapping her inside, and yet... she hadn’t known how to leave, either. it seemed that required some grand excuse, some epic battle, and rose hadn’t had the energy for either. 

that’s what she was trying to say to bellamy, somehow – that she’s never done this before. she’s done this before, but not like this. she can’t really blame him for not getting it; it’s all very confusing when she thinks about it, even to her – the door was open but it was closed, the sun was there but she couldn’t see it, she’s loved someone and she’s been loved by someone but she’s never done either like this. she feels bad for making him feel like he had to follow all of that, because the truth is, half of the time she’s just thinking out loud. she certainly wasn’t expecting anything, least of all reciprocation, and so his reaction startles her. 

i love you, more than i ever have anyone. it should be the kind of thing that sets off fireworks, but her brow furrows a little instead as his lips find the back of her hand. she wants that to make her feel warm all over, become a song that makes the butterflies he’s made out of measly caterpillars dance and sing, and yet the mood’s not right for it. it feels... forced, somehow, and she can’t help but think she’s screwed up somehow, made him feel obligated to say something he wouldn’t have otherwise. there’s an anxiousness to him she doesn’t understand, and as he continues, her confusion only deepens. she’s too busy processing to say anything at first, but her hand does tighten around his out of instinct, feeling uncomfortably close to losing hold of it – like he might slip right through her fingers if she doesn’t. like christian. the way he knows her warms her most of all, and so her thumb absently caresses the front of his as he speaks.  

and then he lets out an exhale and the little way it quivers is powerful enough to rock her entire world. she does pull away then, but only so that she can touch his face, fingers gently curling around the curve of his cheek.  “ hey, what’s going on ? ”   because something’s clearly happening here, but she’s been left behind. the question is tender in nature, and the look in her eyes is just as.  “ i know that. you don’t think i know that ? ”  it too is gentle, not the least bit accusing.  “ you think.. i think there’s something going on with you and tasha ? that i don’t trust you ? ”   again, merely curious, attempting to connect the dots, figure this out. 

nothing he’s saying seems to be that explosive in nature, but she can’t see what would justify this kind of reaction either – what would make bellamy seem... scared. it hurts her heart. all she can do is go with her gut.  “ i told you that i was hurt when i found out you knew about tasha being alive, and that was true. i think, after everything, i wanted someone to be who they said they were. i was so tired of all the secrets. ”  and knowing what that one in particular might have meant for christian, for lissa, even for her... but that doesn’t matter. it was tasha who deserved the blame for that, but after everything she’d done, rose could hardly expect honesty from her. from bellamy, however, she could.   “ but that moment was also the first time that i felt like i.. understood you. i had glimpses, but it wasn’t until then that i felt like everything made sense. like... we were the same. ”  she understood him because she was the same, because she’d do anything for someone she loved, too.  “ and that’s when i realized that the real bellamy, the one who would keep a horrible secret like that for someone he loved even when it was tearing him apart, was so much better than the one i knew. ”  

and she fell in love with him.  “ and i fell in love with him. ”  she smiles when she says that, thumb stroking his cheek.  “ i know who you are. i love who you are. and a part of who you are is being a person who can love tasha and want to protect her even after everything she’s put you through. she’s a part of who you are. you love her, she loves you. i know that. that’s okay. ”  she considers. she’s not sure there is a word for tasha is what to her, but she’s not her enemy, and once she was her friend. friend seems too casual a word, but given the trust they have to put in each other to make this whole thing work, it doesn’t feel wrong, either. she’s sincere.  “ plus, tasha’s my friend. i care about her. and she’s your family, and christian’s, which kind of makes her mine, too, right ? definitely a cousin of some sort, at least. ”  she’s teasing, making a joke of how royals refer to each other as cousins, but there’s something tentative about it, too. bellamy insisted that she was his family long before there was anything romantic about it, but there’s something different about this, something a part of her worries is presumptive. like he might think she’s trying to encroach on their relationship or something, which isn’t it at all. she just wants to reassure him, make that scared, nervous look of his go away. 

i get if that’s too much. 

she might feel like he were trying to pull away if he didn’t seem so upset, and her hands slide down to his shoulders, squeezing them. too much. that sticks with her, weighing on her heart.  “ what i said before... i wasn’t expecting you to reciprocate. i wasn’t looking for that. i don’t need that. ”  she looks down now, not avoiding, just.. thinking. trying to explain to him, trying to explain to herself. it’s harder than it should be. it’s harder, and sometimes that’s what hurts the most. how difficult she finds it is to understand herself when it comes to dimitri, how little control she feels she has.   “ i just meant.. i loved dimitri. and i would’ve done anything for him, i would have. but we weren’t... we weren’t like you and tasha. ”  and it had taken a horribly painful long time to learn that – to see the difference between what they had and what bellamy and tasha did, even christian and lissa. we’ve hurt each other, maybe beyond repair, but she’s family. family. there’s the difference. the difference she can live with. painful, but easier than the truth. so much more bearable.  “ or christian and lissa. i thought.. for a really long time that we were. and i wanted us to be. i wanted...”  a family.  “ but... we weren’t family. and i – ”  a compulsive need to correct herself arises, one she can’t not obey. i tried so hard, she tries to say, but can’t.  “ we tried so hard for so long, but when that was done... there wasn’t anything else left. and i don’t... i don’t think he... i don’t think he knew me. –.. and i don’t know if you can love someone if you don’t know them. so this... is new to me. ”  

rose is almost relieved when bellamy lets the smile fall. god and everybody – at least christian and laurel and lissa, god knows she’s talked enough about it in their company – knows she loves his smile, but she can almost feel how hard he has to work for it, the effort he’s putting into holding it up. it makes her wonder if he’s doing it for her, if he feels like he has to pretend with her, and that makes her want to reach out to him, reassure him somehow that it’s not the case. it’s hard to hold herself back. she’d almost regret her words if they weren’t so true, if she didn’t feel that he was in such dire need of hearing them – that he might’ve gone his whole life believing something different and is struggling with the repercussions of that now. the last thing she wants is to make him feel like he has to force anything for her, but as she finds herself beginning to worry, there’s something keeping her silent, telling her to stand her ground and wait – wait for him to process, to keep talking, because if she looks closely enough she can see he’s on the verge of it, that maybe he’s heard the sincerity of what she’s said and that’s given him the urge to open up, given him permission to have a single moment where he’s a fraction as gentle with himself as he is with everyone else. 

she’s known since she saw him on the phone that there’s more going on inside him than he’s letting on – since she saw that weary look in his eyes as he talked to octavia and the defeated one afterward, felt a heaviness to him throughout that seemed extreme for the circumstances. her gut tells her it’s the right thing, allowing him to either continue or choose not to without any additional prompting from her, but holding back was hard, just as it was when she’d seen him become more and more strained on the phone with his sister, but she can see the necessity of her patience, and so she finds it within herself. 

once she knows it’s right, it’s not so hard at all to muster. 

it was that distress that had kept her in the room even though she wondered if the right thing would be to turn around. she didn’t know he was on the phone when she’d walked in, and for all she knew this was a private conversation he didn’t want an audience for. just because he liked having her around and seemed to enjoy whenever she did something that implied she felt at home here didn’t mean he wanted her present for conversations with his sister, and while it was an honest mistake, he might not appreciate her hanging around afterward. but she could hear the exhaustion in his voice, and no matter how she tried to convince herself to wait in the living room until he was done, she couldn’t stand the idea of leaving him alone like that. so instead she’d sat on the bed hoping she could lend him some kind of support, that having her there was better than not. it was a risk, one a part of her still worried was taken hastily, but she was glad she was there when it was over, glad to be able to take his hands and try to offer him some comfort. she hopes he’s glad as well, that he’s not wishing he was alone. 

just as the smile disappears she finds herself reliving that last second of it, though, and then understanding outweighs insecurity because suddenly she can almost feel what he’s feeling so completely – so perfectly – that it’s nearly painful, can feel what he’s feeling because she’s lived it before, experienced it herself. maybe not the same thing, not the exact same thing, anyway, but she knows what it’s like to have been given something kind and not know how to hold it, to simultaneously want to hold it close to your chest and throw it away because you can’t possibly deserve it, can’t possibly keep it to yourself. bellamy wants to push it away because that’s what he knows, but he’s trying to hold onto it anyway. he’s trying to cup it in his hands and tuck it away somewhere safe, even if all he wants to do is give it back to her, even if all he feels like doing is sending it far away. rose is inspired by that, will remember that next time she finds herself wanting to do the same, how much it took for him to keep it close and accept it rather than turn it away, but for right now, she’s proud of him. god, she’s so proud of him. she can’t respond to the thank you because she’s so proud of him. 

and she wants to tell him more than anything, but that would be asking too much right now, maybe, so later, maybe, and then he’s talking – he’s talking, telling her things, and all there is in the world is what he’s telling her. they haven’t moved long enough for her to become restless, to begin fidgeting with his hands out of habit, but she lacks the urge. she does squeeze them, though, silent encouragement, the silent tenderness she finds herself aching to give him out loud, to express by wrapping her arms around him. it breaks her heart, what he’s saying. it’d be easy to cry for him, to hold him as if she can somehow heal every heartbreak he’s endured that way, but she knows he can’t. she does let her thumb meet his, though, her way of temporarily staving off the massive urge she has to hold him, to physically position herself so that she’s between him and any threat that could possibly materialize in the doorway because he’s allowed himself to be vulnerable. 

until you. she wants to be warmed by that, but mostly she’s sad, sad because she hates the idea of bellamy having lived so long with this alone, that she wasn’t somehow there earlier to ease the ache. it should be a wonderful, heady thing to be first in this way, to give him something no one else was willing or capable of giving, but her heart breaks again and again for every year bellamy went without something as simple as unconditional love, as safety. for every year he felt like he didn’t deserve love, like he had to earn it, like his worth and value in a relationship was as a caretaker. i’m sorry, she wants to say, because she is, she is, or that’s horrible, because it is, it is, but neither of those things feel right, and neither does telling him her opinion of how he was raised when he’s still forming it himself. something in him is trying so very hard to process that, and she needs to let him, no matter how much she wants to insist it was cruel, so cruel. 

if bellamy decides he is going to resent his mother for what she did to him, for the weight she put on him, she’ll be the first person to tell him it’s okay, that feeling whatever he feels is okay; she won’t discourage him like dimitri did her, won’t dismiss him like her mother has. but he has to get there himself. he can’t be thinking about her anger; he can’t be thinking about her, period.  “ that must have been so hard, ” she does say, so softly it’s nearly a whisper, soon finding herself unsatisfied with the words. hard. the understatement of the century.  “ that must have been impossible, ” she corrects. because no matter what he did, he would have been wrong, or felt wrong. more than anything she wants to say it wasn’t his fault, that he’s not responsible for any of it, but she knows it would be invalidating him, because even if it wasn’t his fault, he was all that octavia had, all that kept her alive. to say he wasn’t responsible is to say that isn’t true, and as much as she wants to cry at the thought of a six year old bellamy trying to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, that’s not something she can do now. she has to hear him when he says it was all on him, because it was. it had to be because he was all there was. 

“ you’re the strongest person i know, ” she says at that second part, eyes full of truth, of faith, even if a little shiny. it’s clear she means every word she’s saying.   “ even when you’re scared. even when you’re upset. even when you don’t know what to do or say. none of that makes you weak. ”  she’s thinking about the phone call now, this phone call that stirred all of this in him. she can understand now – he wasn’t able to give octavia what she needed, or felt like he wasn’t able to, and now he’s blaming himself because since he was six years old, giving octavia everything she wanted or needed has been his job, his sole purpose for existing. that’s something else she’s going to cry about later, but she’s pushing that away for now.  

and lack of light, since everyone knows bad things grow in the dark. 

which they now have a lot of, seeing as they’re fresh out of a light source. the light from the kitchen leaking through the crack in the door is more than enough for dhampir eyes, and the darkness of night is beginning to give way as they grow nearer to what’s considered morning for humans, but the fact remains. still, she’s too warm from before, too filled with energy for it to make much progress – it scales her ribs two at a time, but before its grip can grow too firm, the joy of what she’s said shakes it loose. i love you. before rose fears herself, she loves him – and like the sun, it casts light on everything it touches. it makes its way around her self doubt and shines into her anxiety, does wonders for the shadows of past heartbreak and miracles for the blackness death left behind. it’s living – it’s alive. and so is she. she nearly says it twice just for the thrill of that, of being alive and loving him with it – with all the life she found on her own. it’s par for the course with her – impulsively saying something raw and unexpected and for a moment being so consumed by it there’s nothing else at all, least of all fear. except it was more casual than blurted, almost so casual that it took her a second to even realize she’d said it. 

but then the vibrating bed springs begin to gradually still, the light finds a single point of focus, the buzzing atoms inside her remember their shape. it occurs to her what she may have done. the realization freezes her in place, quite literally – the smile taking up more than half her face becomes a little tense around the edges, hardened by shock. all the love and light and joy suddenly feels overwhelming, too much. too much for him, she worries. too much. what they have, rather new and still miraculously light, will be crushed by the weight of her. 

it’s happened before. 

except: the sun will still rise. the ice holding her cheeks hostage thaws a little, releasing the muscle. the sun. except: we will need to replace our lamp. the smile softens. doesn’t fade, doesn’t mellow, just transforms into something a little deeper. his reassurance starts it all up again – the sound of birds beginning to chirp outside his window that she would’ve sworn had gone silent, each of the bodily processes that had begun to stall, the light. not the light bulb sitting shattered on the floor, but the real kind. at first it’s going so fast she can’t sift through it, any of it, least of all the relief pounding into her. sensory overload at its finest. 

clarity, sharp and wonderful, comes in bits and pieces: the sun. we. our. it’s not an invitation. he doesn’t say it like he’s inviting her to move in with him or co-own lamps or anything stupid like that. he doesn’t say it like she ever needed an invitation of any kind. he says it like there was never a moment where his space wasn’t her space, where his home wasn’t her home. she’s not a guest. she’s not a visitor. which means she didn’t break this. which maybe means she couldn’t break this, at least not so easily. she wonders how this keeps happening, how a space for one person can suddenly seem made for two. how bellamy can share his space with her like it's nothing at all. ( you’re safe here, it maybe boils down to. you’re safe, it maybe boils down to, everything he’s ever said to her. everything he’s ever said to her might just boil down to that. )   

“i liked our lamp,” she whines with a pout – or something only vaguely resembling a pout, since she’s still smiling so widely. okay, so she’s actually never thought about the lamp for longer than the second it took to turn it on or off before this moment, but now it’s their lamp, the lamp she broke after saying i love you, the lamp he then called their lamp. she’s seeing it in a totally different light now. no pun intended. now it has.. sentimental value, or whatever. her hands leave her cheeks to turn the thing over, surveying the damage, sifting through the pieces.  “maybe it’s just the bulb? – and.. shade.. and switchy thingy..”

“probably.”  what is meant to sound like a hearty greeting is ironed flat by exhaustion and worn down to a mere mumble of truth and neediness. there’s a wave of relief that manifests itself in a tiny smile when she wakes to the sound of his voice, but it loses traction when her hands move to wipe the sleep from her eyes and come away blackened and unsuccessful, stained with whatever was left of her makeup and failing to achieve a less fatigued state.

that seems important, somehow.

just a day and a half ago she and octavia were sitting in front of the mirror applying each other’s makeup for no reason other than octavia had thought it would be fun and rose couldn’t see the harm in indulging her. it’d been silly, but she’d felt stupidly giddy the rest of the morning – makeup was a practice she hadn’t partaken in for months, and call her shallow, but she’d felt pretty. god, she’d missed feeling pretty – getting to care about and enjoy that kind of thing. it put a bounce in her step that had lasted the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, right up until they’d learned that elena was strigoi and christian had been taken.

now all that’s left of octavia’s handiwork is an echo of liner and shadow around her eyes, drifting down to her cheeks, and the makeup staining her hand and elbow. and had the strigoi – had elena, had their friend – gotten their way, there would be even less of christian.

they – she – hadn’t. he’s okay. she’s reminding herself of that over and over again, like the sight of him now can erase the horror movie that was all of that time she couldn’t be sure he was even alive. camping out by his bedside might have even been a little excessive even, but rose couldn’t stand the thought of him waking up alone, even if his night stay was hardly the days she’d spent confined to a bed recovering from a bullet wound. she’d spent too much time alone at war with her own thoughts to leave him to the mercy of his.

“everyone’s okay,” she tells him before he can ask, straightening up and stretching tense muscles, “you’re okay. elena’s okay. she’s… she’s elena again. she’s moroi.” she means to follow that up with more reassurances, to tell him how glad she is that he’s okay, to tell him she understands – has a truckload of bad memories playing on loop to remind her that she too has survived a monster that looked like someone she loved, and not unscathed, but something else comes out before she can stop it, before she even realizes it’s happening.

it’s low and raw and maybe not fair at all, and her eyes are wet. the tears that fall leave faint black lines down her cheeks, though they’re hard to tell apart from all grime and bruising that’s accumulated over these past few days.

“’save yourself,’” rose says in a voice that suggests the words aren’t her own, are instead repeated. it’s flat and tired and hurting no matter how she tries to hide it, and she does try. “’save yourself.’ what kind of crap is that?”  her fist weakly strikes out against the mattress in a show of frustration, doing surprisingly little to offset the trembling of her voice. she’s taken back to that moment, to the look of… acceptance, if not defeat, in his eyes. it’s not the action. it’s not the act of sacrifice. christian would die for her, she knows that. just like she’d die for him – not because he’s moroi or royal, but because he’s her friend, because she loves him. it would be hypocritical of her to be angry about that, and it’s not a fight she could win with him.

so she doesn’t try. she doesn’t even try to fight. her words leave little room for argument, though leave it to christian to try. “when i was shot, i fought with everything i had to make it back to you guys. i wanted that more than anything. i. fought. i’ve always fought to make it back to you. ”   that’s what drives her crazy – the idea that every ounce of christian’s body wasn’t fighting to come back to her, to live. that somewhere along the way he decided it would be okay if he didn’t, that that was an acceptable ending – that he was an acceptable loss.  “i love you. you have to fight. you have to fight to live. you have to fight as hard as i did.”

there’s a frantic nature to the words, fear that he won’t listen – fear of her own helplessness, of her own lack of understanding. because she doesn’t understand, not really. she’d die for him or any one of their friends without hesitation, give her life up without so much as a second thought, but rose doesn’t know what it’s like to not want to live with every single ounce of your being, to not want that so much that the wanting could kill you. it terrifies her that christian may have grown defeated, but more than that it terrifies her that defeat is so foreign to her that she has no idea how to out-maneuver it.

and if she can’t by force, she has to convince christian to do it himself. which ordinarily wouldn’t be so daunting a task, but rose is tired and aching and there are messy, inconsistent black smudges on her cheeks suggesting she will never be anything but, that any effort to attempt anything else will be futile. she wants to go back to that morning, to the little bit of naive safety that was never having had to wonder what her life would be like without christian in it– never having reason for those thoughts to be beating through her brain. 

which ordinarily wouldn’t be so difficult a truth, except rose wants to live and she wants it bad enough for all of them, but she’s terrified it’s not enough.  

”oh, shut up.”   there’s a laughter creeping up from her belly and into her throat like the sun, warming all that it comes into contact with and stripping the words of any bite the smile burning across her face didn’t scare away. rose punches his shoulder playfully without really thinking about it, grinning at him as she does.  

she can’t assign words to the relief she feels standing here with him feeling the kind of friendly and familiar she hadn’t imagined would ever be possible for them after their disastrous break-up– can’t describe the sensation taking place in her gut of guts as some deeply buried, nearly forgotten knot of heartache is tentatively untangled, pulled apart, and allowed to heal. 

and it’s amazing. it’s wonderful. she could grow wings and fly away right now. 

it’s too good to be true, the potential for friendship, but she’s quick to tell herself whatever she needs to to believe it– he’s with sydney, she’s with bellamy, they’ve both moved on, they’re both happy, and so maybe it can be water under the bridge now. they can have a truce. they can be friends. they can even be friends about joke about that time they dated for a few months and it ended terribly, apparently. 

she’s not proud of herself for that, but she wants her friend, and it’s a tempting idea, this idea that adrian will let her off the hook. 

but she doesn’t deserve it. she knows she doesn’t deserve it. and more importantly, adrian deserves better. so that smile dissolves to nothing soon after, her features transforming in an eye-blink, becoming heartbreakingly sincere. her flimsy control over her mouth fails her, and she blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.  

”i can’t believe what i did to you.”   she can’t. when she tries to make sense of what made sense to her then, she finds herself at a complete loss. when she looks for reason in her actions, when she looks for sense, she can find neither. she can’t reconcile the person she was then with the person she is now, can’t fathom her own actions.    “that’s not– that’s not an excuse. i’m not excusing what i did. there is no excuse. but i – i cared about you so much. i loved you. i did. you’re one of the most important people in my life. and i.. i can’t believe what i did to you. it was thoughtless and awful and.. i can’t believe that i did it.”

the emotion in her voice is too thick for the words to be anything but true, the most genuine explanation she can muster, filled with the disbelief she speaks of and unraveling by the end. it’s like she’s had a bucket of cold water spilled over her head, suffered an electrical shock that’s resulted in extreme, excruciating clarity. in the moment, all she’d been able to think about was dimitri– how much she loved him, how desperate she was not to lose him again. it had devoured her. there had been nothing else.

with some space, she can’t understand being so consumed by that that adrian ceased to matter to her, that his feelings weren’t every bit as real, every bit as important. in retrospect, it feels like a violation. it feels like she was drugged, like some love-sick crazy person took over her body and committed inconceivable acts while she was on some inexplicable acid trip. 

what she once thought was love sounds like a plea of insanity now. 

what she once thought was love is terrifying to her now. 

”the cheating, and the lying, and how i handled it afterward… i know i can’t take any of it back, i know, but if i could… i swear that i would. all of it. please believe that.”   it makes her nauseous just thinking about it. but this moment isn’t about that. it isn’t about the spell that fell over her when she fell in love with dimitri, how it twisted everything up inside her more and more the deeper she got; it’s not about her guilt, her shame, her disbelief. it’s about adrian. without realizing it she’d allowed her gaze to fall to the ground, embraced the comfort of escape. deciding such escape is cowardly, rose forces herself to look him in the eye, blinking back the moisture in hers.   

“i’m so sorry, adrian.”   before she can stop herself, she falls forward on the tips of her toes and wraps her arms around him. an impulsive thing she can’t manage to regret as she finds herself clinging tighter, almost as if she can fix what she broke by molding it back into one piece with her own body. for so long she was anything but gentle, but kind with him, and it’s almost as if she’s trying to apologize for that too, whisper the love she hadn’t been able to give him into his shoulder now.    “i am so sorry. i’m so sorry.”