Look Beyond What You See

Forgiveness

 Warmth, all around. A feeling of safety. Where am I? What happened? Doesn't matter. I could stay here forever, warm and safe.

No. Something is wrong in the universe. Something happened. What happened? The front of my brain begins to throb as the memories come back: a kiss of betrayal, a declaration of war, a broken necklace, a dark purple cloud, a rat's tail. Yekaterina is gone.

I haven't had a happier thought since I was sick and Dmitri sat with me.

Dmitri....

I slowly open my eyes to darkness, pierced with flecks of light like glints from a gemstone. I'm outside. But why? The last thing I remember was a swirl of pink, interrupted by crackling electric blue eyes. I turn my head to see plants, and beyond them, dim masses just slightly darker than the night sky. The mountains. I'm on the roof. How did I get here?

"Good morning," a rich velvet voice intones with a hint of amusement. I turn my head the other way swiftly--perhaps too quickly, for I saw stars quite unlike those that greeted my waking eyes--to find Dmitri sitting next to me, radiating the warmth that I've found so comforting. "How are you feeling?"

"Not terrible," I mumble. It's so hard to put words together while looking into those burning amber eyes.

"You had me worried. You fainted several hours ago, and this is the first time you've stirred."

Enough memories have come back to indicate that he should not be surprised by that. "Is it any wonder, after all that transpired today?"

That guilty expression that kills me inside. "Aerys...." The way he says my name.... "I never wanted Yekaterina to be here. I certainly never wanted her attentions, and it never occurred to me that she might force such dishonorable conduct upon me as that you witnessed. You had to know, that it was all her--"

"You let her sit on your lap, and you were not sufficiently discouraging to deter her prior to that dishonorable conduct I witnessed." My head and my heart ache at the memory.

"I know, and I am deeply, most ardently sorry for it, and all the trouble I have caused by not being more firm with her. At first...I did not discourage her immediately because, after our disagreements about the combat instructor and his conduct towards you, I hoped that maybe you would feel about Yekaterina as I did about him. By the time I tried to correct the problem, she was too bent on her goal to be dissuaded by mere words, at least from me."

"You were trying to make me jealous." Flashes from what I observed pass between him and his father in the birdbath return to my memory. I knew of this before.

"Fairly ineffectually, until that last, it would have seemed."

"For that I must apologize. I should have told you right away how much her conduct towards you irritated me. But I wanted to outdo you, childish as it sounds, and so I decided to pretend I was unaffected." I sigh deeply, feeling wholly my own guilt in the mess that has accumulated between us. "You and she were not the only ones at fault. I should have been honest from the start."

"And I never should have let the situation arise in the first place."

"For all we know, Yekaterina might have proved to be just as much of a harlot without any encouragement whatsoever from you," I point out with a weak shrug, which is also the first of half-hearted attempts to arrange myself in a sitting position. Dmitri's hands touch my shoulders, guiding and supporting me until I am leaning against him comfortably, with his arm around my waist.

I feel remarkably comfortable accepting this kind of attention, considering that it comes from a man who has endlessly frustrated and angered me for the past several days.