Never Too Late: A VA Fanfiction

Chapter Ten

DPOV:

The next couple weeks passed without incident. Rose became even more used to my presence, to the point where I could stand a little less than two feet away before she couldn't handle it any more. It was the closest any man had gotten to her since the rape. Unfortunately, it only applied to me; the closest any other man had gotten to her was four feet, even her friends. But all in all, she was making progress.

As the weeks passed, I also learned a lot more about her. Her sarcasm and jokes never failed to amuse me. I got the hang of dealing with her pregnancy hormones, and was usually rewarded by learning something else about her. And oh, was there a lot to learn.

I found out that Janine dropped her off at the Academy when she was four years old, she met Vasilisa when they were five, and became instant friends. Most of this I knew, of course, but other things I had no idea about. Like she stayed at the Academy until she was ten years old, waiting for her mom to visit her, or take her during vacations. Once she turned ten, she finally left for Christmas vacation with the Dragomirs. When I heard that my heart broke a little for her. I couldn't imagine not seeing my family every vacation when I was in school, let alone not seeing them for several years, not knowing if they were alive or not. I wouldn't be able to do it.

We touched on the accident a little bit, the accident that killed the Dragomir's. She saw them as family, and talking about it made her sad, and I did my best to avoid things that made her sad. She told me that after the accident, her mother tried to have a relationship with her but it didn't last long; they escaped a few months after the accident.

She told me about last year, after they were captured, how Vasilisa's “uncle” Victor Dashkov tortured Vasilisa into healing him. When Rose told me this story, I saw red I was so angry. I had heard of what happened, of course, but I never knew all the details. I was glad that he's in jail now.

We never talked about the rape, and only rarely mentioned the summer she spent with her mother. Ivan also hadn't been able to find out who Janine's ex-charge was. Apparently, Janine wasn't comfortable talking about it and he had been too busy dealing with other stuff to properly look it up. I understood that; I remembered how busy he could get, to the point where he forgot to even eat. So the mystery of her rapist remained just that, a mystery.

There were rumors going around about Rose, and often I would see her come in near tears because of something she heard. I knew that if she wasn't pregnant and hormonal, the rumors wouldn't really bother her, or bring her to tears. Then again, if she wasn’t pregnant, then there would be no rumors, but still.

There was a particular rumor that seemed to hit her hard: the rumor that she was a blood whore. She had often cried about that, which led me to believe that the Moroi, whoever he was, had bitten her while he raped her. I never asked and she never told me but sometimes, when she had her hair up, and the sun hit her neck just right, I could see faint scars on it which made me wonder, exactly how bad was it?

~*~

I was crossing the courtyard after practice with Rose, when I saw her up ahead. I saw another person, a male Moroi by the looks of it, come up to her and stop a few feet away. He said something, then stepped closer. I watched. The wind blew against my back, so I couldn't hear what was said, but I could see the queasy expression on Rose's face as he got closer. I started towards them as Rose's expression turned from uneasy to slightly panicked. She started backing up as he came closer to her, almost as close as I usually was, which was my tip off that it was not a friendly situation.

“– clearly didn't mind the other times,” the guy said, smirking, as I came up to them. His attention was solely on Rose, who looked completely terrified at his proximity now, and was about to scream. In fact, it looked like she was keeping the screams at bay as tears poured down her cheeks, her eyes wide with terror.