A Turkish Tale

Everyone who is giving my story a go, a huge THANK YOU! This is my first fanfic and also the first time I try to write in English. Critics are highly appreciated, especially when it comes to grammar. I'll be taking baby steps. Once again, thank you and good reading!

1

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing but the plot!

I had been living in Turkey for the past four years. They hadn't been the easiest, but surely the time I took for myself slowly helped me heal some of my wounds. Superficially, at least. It still hurt to think back at the things I had to leave behind. But it wasn't like I'd ever had any other option really.

The whole being-framed-for-murdering-queen-bitch thing was crazy. Till today I can't tell if I spent a day or a year in that damn cell. I went through the trial and I was convicted. Guilty. Sentenced to death. And I was numb. But, in the end of the day, my dad saved me. Yep, my incredibly awesome mobster father, who was also the only other person I had the courage to tell about the lost Dragomir, came up with a fine escape plan involving my supposed death. I kid you not. Come to think of it, the man is just as insane as I am, so I probably shouldn't have been so shocked. Nonetheless my low opinion of his so called brilliant plan at the time, I promised I'd get along with it, though he never told me the details.

The whole time I was blocking Lissa's feelings. It was all horrible enough without adding her despair and grief to my own. I wanted to keep a happy memory of my best friend with me wherever I was going, if I was going anywhere at all. The last few days I started worrying whether my good deeds surpassed my bad ones. I was afraid not.

When the day of my execution arrived, I still had no idea what the man was going to do in order to save my ass, so I allowed myself to shout, and cry, and punch and just be mad at the world until Mikhail came to take me. I was glad it was a friendly face that got to escort me through my final steps. No one but my parents, my executioner and a few other guardians and members of the Royal Council to act as witnesses were allowed in the execution room.

My whole body was shaking as I hopped onto the table and let a Moroi tie the straps that would hold me. As if there was any chance I could escape a room fully packed with highly trained guardians. Most of them kept a blank face, but here and there I would get a glimpse of sadness. I knew most of them believed in my innocence, Mikhail had told me so.

Through the glass that separated me from the "audience", I saw my sobbing mother clutching on my father as if her life depended on it. I guess it did. When she met my eyes staring back at her she gulped, trying to recover whatever control she had left, and with the tenderest, most loving and regretful eyes I had ever seen on her face she mouthed "I love you" to me. I cried harder and mouthed the same thing back to her, oh so mad for never having the chance of building our newly found relationship. She ran to the glass and plastered her hands against it, her last attempt to reach me. My dad was behind her, supporting her weight, but unlike my mother's reaction, he got a determined look in his face. I grimaced under my tears, trying to show him how pissed I was at him. But I couldn't. In the end, my expression softened because I knew he would have tried his best. His eyes were so fierce, like he was trying to send me a message. However, I couldn't and wouldn't decipher whatever he was trying to say. Because the Moroi who had strapped me to the table was now stretching my left arm in order to get a good hold of my vein.

I saw the syringe in which the substance that would take my life away was contained. Such a small thing, and minutes after it was introduced in my small body, the game would be over for me. Chills were running up and down my spine, but there was nothing I could do. The Moroi came over and gently caressed my skin with the cotton plastered in alcohol. I was able to smirk to myself, much to everyone's astonishment, thinking how stupid could it be to prevent me from infection. Like I could die from it.

I didn't want to see it, so I turned my head. Soon enough I felt my skin being pierced as I was washed over with complete sorrow and fear. But, as the liquid took me over, my feelings changed. I was happy. Happy for having met Lissa, the best person in the world and my forever best friend, my true sister. Happy she found Sparky before it was over for me. Happy with the knowledge that Adrian was stronger than we ever gave him credit for and he would live through my death, maybe to find love again in the future. And happy for having the chance of, at least for a short period of time, seeing Dimitri as the dhampir, the honest and strong man he'd always been. My Russian god. My lover, my love, the one who would always own my heart, even when the mists of death had taken me from this world.

Dimitri.

Maybe he was right to let me go.

My eyes fluttered as my body felt weightless. I could faintly hear thuds coming from the glass, but my mind barely registered it was my mom punching it in desperation.

The Moroi had his face inches above from mine. He seemed... familiar. I had seen this guy. Where? I think he noticed my confusion, because a smile tugged at his lips and he whispered to me in a kind voice:

"Sleep. Everything will be better."

Then a name came to me, the last sparkle of thought from the infamous Rose Hathaway. Just as I was saying it, I couldn't help but think what a shame it was that my last word in this world had to be:

"Tad."

...

...

...

I woke up in a white room feeling a little dizzy and nauseous.

"Oh, fuck", I said, realization hitting me hard, "I'm so dead."

I looked frantically around, trying to get a look of my surroundings. I was shadow-kissed. Or had been, at least. Anyhow, I should be surrounded by darkness or the dead people that used to haunt me when I was alive. Instead, I was in a white bed, in a white room – that was huge, by the way – facing furniture in soft tones and a white door. Maybe someone from above had considered me good when in life. I actually doubted that a little, but who was I to question superior orders, right?

There was a window opening to a beautiful garden full of blossoming red and yellow flowers and, beyond, the horizon was lost in green fields that flattened the earth. The sky was blue. Everything was quiet, but the birds.

Man, I was so very, fucking dead.

Suddenly, the door burst open and I watched, horrified, my mother come into the room. She saw me and ran to me, clutching me to her chest despite her smaller figure. I started sobbing as I understood what must have happened.

"Why, mom, why?"

She stepped back so as to get a better look at my face, catching my tears with her caressing fingers all along.

"Because I love you so much."

"But you shouldn't have. I'm not worth it. You should be living, there was a life ahead of you with dad!"

She frowned then, confused.

"What are you talking about, Rose?"

I opened my eyes wide, trying to avoid the stubbornly falling tears and very conscious of what a fragile little girl I looked right then. And even dead, hating it.

"You, mom. Dead. You killed yourself after I was gone. That's why you're here with me."

She laughed so outright then I was in complete awe for a moment. Never in my life had I seen Janine Hathaway like this. A small smile when I was very lucky was all I could get from her. This afterlife might have its perks, after all.

"And where exactly do you think we are?" she asked.

The way she said it made me uncertain.

"Some sort of Heaven?" I answered hesitantly.

"The day Rose Hathaway goes to Heaven, Hell will break loose on Earth", came a deep voice from the door and I turned to face... No, shit, this couldn't be happening. My father.

"You're dead too!" I all but yelled at him in a accusing manner.

He snorted, coming to join my mother and I.

"No one's dead, little girl."

I froze. What the hell was that old man saying?

"You're wrong. I died..."

"Yes, you did. For a few hours.", said my mother.

My dad took from there: "Your heart stopped beating and you lost all of your vital signs. You were declared dead. They transferred you to the morgue soon after and that's when we operated or little magic. We stole your body and filled your supposed coffin with bricks. Quite original, huh? Since you were a convicted murderer, you had no right for a burial, so your 'body' was incinerated. Then we took you here with us and were waiting for the effects on your body to wear off. Your mother didn't get to know of the plan until we were on the plane. I had to keep her in the dark so that everything could work perfectly and I apologize for that."

By the end of his speech he was looking lovingly at my mother and I was in utter shock. The information couldn't sink in, just couldn't.

"What the hell! You people are nuts?" I exploded. Then it dawned on me. "What 'effects' were you talking about?"

Dad nodded towards the door and, for the first time, I noticed the man that was standing there. Some guardian I was. But it wasn't any man. It was the man, the Moroi who had executed me. Or rather hadn't.

"Tad", I said, remembering the name.

He smiled at me and came closer.

"Thought you wouldn't remember", he said.

Tad. That's who he was. With some effort from my part, I could tell where I'd known him from. One single time we had seen each other in what seemed like another life. He'd been the guy my father had sent to me with the notebook the time Sidney asked me about the file on Eric Dragomir which had been stolen.

I just stared at him like an idiot.

"What I injected in you", he explained, ignoring my retarded attitude, "was a mix especially prepared by the Alchemists to keep the body under non-living conditions for a few hours. Now, I might have been the delivering guy, but you should thank your friend Sidney for that. Apparently, she truly appreciates you."

I was speechless. Touched. In complete delight to know that I was alive and, odds were, staying that way. It was all too soon to start thinking about the consequences this whole situation was bringing to my life, but, for now, it didn't matter. Because I had a life.

I still couldn't express a thank you beyond my grateful eyes, so I turned to my parents, a strange joy and anxiety starting at the pit of my stomach.

"So what now?" I asked.

My father blessed me with a grin spreading all over his face.

"Welcome to Turkey, my daughter. Welcome home, kiz."