this grief tearing me apart
“I thought I’d find you here.”
Rose didn’t turn around at his voice, didn’t raise her head, and didn’t stop gouging at the wood in front of her with the tip of her stake. The metal glinted dimly in the flickering light of the candles and the pew in front of her might have been a hundred years old, a thousand years old, but Rose didn’t care. She wouldn’t care if Headmistress Kirova, hell if Queen fucking Marina Szelsky herself, arrived to scream at her and then chuck her in a miserable prison somewhere for defacing a sacred space.
Let them come. Let them face what they had done.
She clenched her jaw and shoved her stake further into the ancient wood, deepening the gouge she’d been working on. Her companion moved closer, his footsteps silent despite the heavy boots she knew he had to be wearing; it was the way they were trained after all. She focused her eyes ahead, despite the burn of tears that threatened to make an appearance, and realised with a start that the random grooves she’d been making hadn’t been so random after all. She had methodically carved the letter ‘D’ into the wood.
Suddenly she wanted to shove the pew away, wanted to upturn it, set it alight, set the whole fucking Dominion alight. Let them all feel an ounce of what she was feeling.
“I know how you feel, Rose.”
Rose forgot about her carving, she forgot about the stake in her hand, she even forgot about what had happened to make her feel like her heart was ripping in two in her chest. Her head turned slowly, so slowly, for she couldn’t make herself move any faster, until she was staring at Mikhail dead on.
To his credit, he didn’t flinch back from her stare, from the pure fury that was suddenly roiling behind her dark eyes. He just met her stare and held it.
“You know how I feel?” The words were flat and cold but there was a warning in them that Mikhail would do well to heed for they promised violence if he did not. “You know how I feel?”
“Yes,” Mikhail said gravely, far more grave than she had ever seen him before any of this mess had started. “When I lost Sonya-”
Rose was out of the pew and in his face before either of them could realise what was happening.
“You did not lose Sonya,” she hissed, pushing him backwards with a two handed shove, forcing him to yield a step.
“You did not lose her.” Another push, another handful of steps. “She chose to leave you.”
Over and over she slammed her hands into his chest but he did not retaliate.
“Dimitri did not choose this, he did not choose to leave me, he was taken from me.”
The last words were a ragged scream as she finally pulled up short, glaring at Mikhail while her chest heaved with emotion.
She drew in a deep breath, trying to regain control of her voice, of herself. “So, do not tell me you know how I feel.”
Mikhail’s eyes had widened marginally at that first strike and yet he had stayed remarkably calm throughout each one, weathering this storm for her and with her. He could understand it, could empathise with it. Hadn’t he also wanted to rip apart anyone who had come near him in the days after losing Sonya?
“Rose,” he said slowly, gently. “The way we lost them might have been different, but I under-”
The sound that emerged from Rose was somewhere between a scream of frustration and a sob of grief as she surprised them both by dropping her shoulder and charging forward. She could have saved herself from the blow, could have dropped Mikhail to the floor without following herself, but she wanted him to feel it, wanted to feel it herself as they both slammed into the hard stone floor of the church.
“You don’t,” she snarled, tears blurring her vision as she somehow found the front of his jacket, seized a hold of it, and used it to haul him and slam him back down again. “You don’t know how I feel! He did everything right! He gave everything! And they still took him!”
She choked on another sob, hands subconsciously tightening as she prepared to haul Mikhail up once again, the only outlet for her emotions, but she wasn’t prepared for him to shift his weight. With tears in her eyes and every other breath coming out as a sob, her technique was poor and it was work of a moment for Mikhail to throw her to the side and roll them over so he could pin her to the cold stone. Hands pinned her wrists down, one knee dug into her thigh to stop her from kicking out, while his other supported his weight so he could give her some room.
“Rose,” he tried again. “You need to calm down. If anyone else sees you like this…” He didn’t finish the sentence, not sure if he even knew what would happen. The Moroi would tolerate some grief when the Guardians lost one of their own, but their patience only went so far. And if Rose didn’t pull herself together, it wouldn’t be good. “Rose-”
“No,” she cried, the keen of a young woman who had never known a mother’s love.
“No,” she sobbed, the cry of a young woman willing to give her life for her best friend.
“No,” she wailed, the grief of a young woman who’d lost the love of her life. “Why?” she finally asked, tears only of despair now rather than anger. “Why did they take him from me?”
“I don’t know,” Mikhail said quietly, the words heavy with his own emotions. Trusting now that she wouldn’t strike him again, Mikhail finally released her and rolled off to the side landing heavily on his back beside her. “I don’t know.”
Her sobs finally eased but the tears continued to come, sliding down the sides of her face to drip onto the ancient stone on which they laid.
“I’m sorry, Rose,” he said finally. “He didn’t deserve this, neither of you did.”
She pressed her lips together and looked away, staring into the flickering flames of the candles to keep her sobs from starting afresh. She’d never felt much of a connection to the chapel, but Dimitri had, coming every Sunday to seek the inner peace that constantly evaded him. Maybe that’s why she’d found herself here in her grief, desperately clinging to any connection to him that she could.
“I can’t stay here,” she heard herself say.
“Okay,” Mihail agreed. “Let’s get out of here. Where do you want to go?”
“No, Mikhail, I can’t stay in the Dominion.” When he didn’t respond she turned her head back to him, scanning his profile but it didn’t betray what he was thinking. “I can’t. He’s out there, and he wouldn’t want…” She couldn’t say the words, and instead swallowed roughly. “I have to find him, Mikhail, and I have to end it. For him.”
Mikhail swallowed and closed his eyes. “Okay,” he said quietly.
Rose stared at him. “Okay?”
He opened his eyes and finally looked at her. “Okay, we’ll go find Dimitri, and then we’ll find Sonya, and we’ll…” He cleared his throat. “We’ll end this for them.”
“Yeah, I’ll come with you, if you’ll have me.”
Again, Rose had to look away. Besides Dimitri, she’d never had someone choose her before, put her and what she needed first.
“Yeah,” she said, voice tight with emotion. “I guess I’ll have you then.”
And when he tipped his boot towards her, she didn’t hesitate to tap it with her own, the unspoken agreement formed.
