With An Addition (VA Fanfic)

Return flight

DPOV
I sat next to Rose on the plane after having had her separated from her best friend. I knew those two were very close and partners in crime, even if Rose was mastermind it didn't mean Lissa didn't contribute. And there was just something so Rose about [silently planning] trying to escape from an in-flight plane and landing in the middle of a forest. Even with a baby in tow.

"What were you thinking, Rose?" It made my heart ache when she refused to meet my gaze, choosing instead to look out the window. Silence met my question instead of her angelic voice. "Rose," I repeated, this time more warningly. "What were you thinking?"
"What about? Fighting you? Or protecting her- them?!" hissed Rose.
"Running," I returned softly.

I was itching to take her into my arms and comfort her. But I couldn't. For so many reasons, I couldn't. Some of those reasons hadn't stopped us before she'd taken Lissa and run, but one brutally painful one pulled me up short now. She wasn't mine. She had a child, a cute replica no-less, and that meant my claim to being with or near her was gone with that daughter.

"I can't say," she said nearly pleadingly.
"Rose..." I really hoped my begging passed her by. But that was unlikely. We'd proved time and again she saw what others didn't. This proved to be no different.
"I can't, Dimitri. For her," she nodded towards the front of the plane where a stiff Lissa was grasping a bottle of water. "For her sake and for Jenée's." Her eyes scanned the plane; she leaped from her chair and over my legs when her eyes landed on her daughter.
"Momma!" Jenée bounced in her chair and held her arms to Rose demandingly.
"Momma's Princess." Rose smiled gently as she released Jenée and pulled her up to her hip. "I guess there's someone you should meet."
"Mr 'Mitri?"
Rose's eyes widened and she nodded. "How'd you guess?"
Jenée's cute baby giggle sounded through the plane as she shrugged. "Dunno. You look at him... I dunno..." Jenée shrugged it off though her eyes betrayed how frustrated she was at not knowing how to tell her mother how she saw the world.
Rose shook her head and kissed Jenée's cheek before returning to sit beside me with Jenée on her lap. "You'll know someday, baby girl. Momma loves you, you know."
The tiny little girl beamed. "Love you, Momma." The girl's young, innocent brown eyes gazed into mine and this sudden need to protect her overwhelmed me. I hadn't felt such an intense wave of emotion upon just meeting someone since I'd first met Rose. "Mr 'Mitri?"
"Yes, sweetie?"
Rose and I locked gazes when Jenée scrunched up her face. What had I done wrong now? Rose shook her head and laughed. "Relax, Jen. Dimitri's a guardian."
"Like Momma?"
"Like Momma."
"That's a stretch of the truth, Rose." An outright lie, really.
"I'm more of a guardian than you," she spat.
"You undermined me."
"You underestimated me," she shot back. We fell into an awkward silence with a little someone looking between us. I swore the look she wore was a speculative and planning one. Just like her mother's.

"Mr 'Mitri, make Momma happy," commanded Jenée with her hands on her hips.
"Now how am I to do that, miss..."
"Jenée," she giggled.
"Well then, Miss Jenée, why don't you tell me how to make your Momma happy?" She was so cute and innocent I couldn't stop from smiling at her antics.
"Oh, cut it out, Jen," laughed Rose. She pulled me back from where I'd lent my elbows on her knee and thigh to be at eye-level with her daughter. "Momma doesn't need a boy to make her happy- just like Princes Elsa. And Princess Jenée is just the same, she doesn't need boys to keep her happy."
Jenée pouted at me and her mother. "But Momma, 'Mitri make Momma smile," factually argued a confused and tired Jenée.
How were kids so perceptive? Rose looked just as frantic and worried as I felt. What if she worked it out? What if Jenée worked out our past- our true past?
"We'll talk about 'Mitri later, okay? Why don't you go to sleep? Momma will wake you again when it's time. Okay?"
Yawning and cuddling into Rose, Jenée nodded and mumbled out something close to, "M'kay, love you, Momma."
Rose smiled, kissed the top of Jenée's head and whispered, "Momma loves you, too, baby girl."

Rose eventually turned to face me once Jenée was sleeping soundly. "Not. A. Word," breathed Rose. Clearly Jenée had had trouble going to sleep last night before we'd swooped in and uprooted her, her mother and her mother's friend. I had to wonder if the child had ever been on a nocturnal schedule. Because if she hadn't she was clearly going to struggle adjusting.

I decided Rose should probably have room to stretch out a little so I nodded at Jenée then my chair as I stood and left.
Rose smiled tiredly. "Thanks."
As I walked away I registered how tired and worn-out Rose really looked.

She was still young and fresh, in a way, but there were signs of the stress she'd been under being a young Mom on the run with her best friend. For at least 30 months. When I'd first met her she'd been mature for her age. She still was- she had to be with Jenée- but she also looked... not old, exactly, but burdened. She'd lost a different type of innocence.

"She's so Rose all over again," said my boss- Guardian Alberta Petrov- as I sat in the same row as her.
"Jenée? Yes, she certainly is." Wasn't she ever. So cute and little but already so cunning.
"Belikov, you know she's going to be a reason for the Headmistress to expel Rose, don't you?"
"Rose won't be expelled, not on my watch. I'd have Jenée herself enrolled at the Academy before I let Rose be expelled." It was a bold and dangerous declaration, one that could endanger my own career, but I meant every word that accidentally slipped through my lips.
Alberta dropped her neutral expression for a millisecond, letting it turn into a warning yet... awed? Proud? Indulgent one? It was gone too quickly for me too get a proper read of it. "Remember your limited power, Dimitri."