Twisted Frame (VA Fanfic)

Five: Zoom or Pano? It's Up To You.

When I was met with the last remnants of sunset, parts of last night returned to me. I had been drinking away a new sorrow. But why? What had it been? And before that I had been drinking because the insanity was too close, because I'd exhausted my magic. But on what? And why couldn't I remember a feeling of euphoria like the magic normally gives me? It was all too much and my head threatened to split open if I tried to remember. If I'd been trying to selectively forget something it had worked.

The closer to the meeting we got the more out of control the people seemed to be. They were mainly Moroi and they were all shouting over each other. Surprisingly my mother found us and pulled us—well, me with Christian and Lissa following—to the side and into the nearest empty corridor.
"Where's that Rose girl?" she demanded.
"I don't know. I asked these two the same thing not five minutes ago. Why?"
My mother kept up her well-practiced façade of poise and control but in her eyes I could see a frantic note. One that turned mournful. "They're saying she's responsible..."
"For what?"
"Murdering your aunt."
"When?" Lissa asked all too sweetly. If she was using compulsion I don't think she was registering it.
"Between eight and eleven, but it could be any time last night."
I pulled a hand through my hair.
"We haven't seen her," sighed Lissa.
"I- I think I may have... but it's all so painful and blurry. Like I didn't want to remember... But why wouldn't I want to remember seeing Rose?"
"Hey Lissa, what about Dimitri... he might know—I thought I saw him, Mazur, and Guardian Hathaway walking somewhere together yesterday afternoon?" The mention of his name made my head explode with the unwanted memories.
"In either the ICU or the NICU," I nearly screamed with the pain in my head.
"Why the NICU?" my mother demanded.
"Why do you think, Mother! Rose is in the ICU and their baby is in the NICU."

Gah! The pain was too much and I didn't want to deal with anymore questions. Let alone about my girlfriend—or was she my ex?—and her baby-daddy, and especially not about the baby. Why couldn't something in my life go my way for once? I couldn't even begin to process that Rose had been accused of murder when my brain was being flooded with images. Images of the incubator and baby therein, of Rose hooked up to machines, and of Belikov kissing her, declaring his love for her. Memories of trying to heal her when I'd found her but being too late, of calling Guardian Hathaway and Eddie to come help. She'd been in so much pain even though her aura was flickering between clinging to life and fading into nothing, half-alive and half-dead... she'd been clinging onto her baby for dear life, I now realised. Again I saw her being rushed into surgery... and delivery. But the worst part of it was the blood, her blood had been everywhere and the smell was overwhelming, and so much of it was streaming from her head and her arms.... The entire inside of both forearms had blood flowing non-stop from cuts, cuts that looked too neat when I'd healed them barely enough to close, close but just barely enough to staunch the blood flow.

"Adrian! Snap out of it! Why is Rose in the ICU!" demanded a frantic Lissa. "Why is she in the ICU?"
"Why do you think? You know what it's like for Spirit to backlash, you tell me why she's in the ICU!"
Her pale angelic face paled further 'til she rivalled a Strigoi. "No...? She wouldn't! Would she?"
"You're bound to her, it's your magic backlashes she suffers more severely than you do. She's the one whose better half is her worse half! You're the one who's been ganging up on her. And you dare assume you know her, you dare assume you know what she's feeling? Do you even read her aura? Have you ever tried even reading her facial features? She knows your emotions and thoughts better than you do, and you dare to restore Belikov only to steal him away from her! She's been through that once—had you steal him from her—and you dared assume you knew her pain! She won't tell you everything she went through when she disappeared. She doesn't need you taking him away from her yet again.
"You never deserved such a dedicated Novice Guardian. You don't deserve her as a friend. You'll be lucky if she lives, let alone if she allows you to visit, and I'm sure as hell she won't let you near her baby. You don't understand what she's been through. You don't even really understand what he's been through. No one does... except for the other. It's always been that way. It always will be."

When I finished ranting I collapsed against the wall and slid down it. The asshole had her hook, line, and sinker. His claws had been in her so deep from the moment I'd met her. He was a self-righteous bastard who believed the only way to protect her was to hurt her. Both of them were. She hadn't done a thing but live her life for them, and she was repaid with nothing but pain and being pushed aside; the two people who mattered most to her were an ungrateful and undeserving selfish bitch and bastard.

I looked up at my shaken mother, "If you want to know where I was all night, ask Joe from the bar, or someone at the hospital, ask Guardian Hathaway and Eddie." A shaky sigh escaped my twitching lips. "As for Rose, I'm sure Belikov was with her. If he wasn't then nurses must have been. There's no way she could've murdered Aunt Tatiana when she's barely alive herself."