[St Petersburg] Travel back and forwards either way | • l e n a

“You can’t smoke that in here.” Dimitri stared at the welcome witch, cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, for a full five seconds before he plucked it out with a thumb and forefinger and put it out with his fingers. Maybe this was going to be worse than he’d previously thought, he mused silently, slipping the cigarette back into his metal cigarette case.

Dimitri hadn’t been sure whether or not his parents would let him come home for a weekend during the whole summer school thing. He hated it, really, but it was their punishment for the way he’d been acting or whatever. He maintained his grades just fine the previous year - maybe failed a couple of things, he didn’t know or care, really, but it was more about his attitude. His parents didn’t know how to act. His mother just cried all the time and his father got aggressive with him. Dimitri took it all with a swathe of apathy and sarcasm. He didn’t care, he’d said. He’d said it a hundred times and when he did, his mother cried some more and then this summer they’d sent him to summer school. He hadn’t known whether or not they’d let him leave at all…

So he’d lied.

He’d lied to the school administration about going home for the weekend; he’d forged a letter from his parents that had their fake permission and fake signatures and he’d skipped summer school for this particular Saturday to visit a particular girl. Last year they’d fought - or well, she’d fought really, he’d just sort of ignored her aside from the odd cutting remark - and he hadn’t visited her at all since her condition had gotten worse. He’d only visited once when she was in the hospital wing at school, late at night, and he’d basically avoided thinking about her since then.

“Come with me, I’ll show you to her room.”

The healer smiled at him and he just started walking in response, barely looking at the guy. “She awake?” He asked in a deep voice. When he got an affirmative answer, he nodded. Stepping into her room, Dimitri’s eyes went straight to hers. It had been a while. “Hey Red,” he said, after a moment of silence. “You coming back to school next year or what?” Dimitri gave the healer who’d let him in a hard look and the man made his excuses and went to go do some actual work.

When Mihaela Lupesco had entered her room, Yelena had been so surprised to see her that she'd said to herself that even Dimitri's visit would have been more expected than the Krov girl's. Now that he was actually here, standing in the middle of the room that had been her home for the past few months, the girl realised that it had obviously been a lie. It shouldn't surprise her, though. When it came to the dark-haired boy she had constantly lied to herself, pretending that she didn't care if he wasn't talking to her or that she didn't care that he was spending more and more time with that fire crazy girl. But of course she cared, she always had.

He broke the silence by using the nickname that had become so familiar over the years that she would've been surprised had he actually used her real name. It was just a small gesture but it meant a lot and she couldn't hide the soft smile that appeared on her face. "I guess so,” she replied quietly after Vadim had left the room. He was one of her favourite healers in here and she was sure that he would want to know everything about Dima’s visit later on. The man was probably the curiousest person she'd ever met.

Focusing back on the Klyk boy, Lena studied him, looking for any kind of change. They hadn't talked since that one night in the hospital wing but he still looked the same. Same dark hair, same piercing blue eyes. His skin was probably not as pale as she remembered but maybe that was just the light in here. For once she was probably paler than he was. It dawned on her that she must still look like crap but then again… He'd seen her in the middle of the night so many times that he must be used to seeing her with red puffy eyes and absolutely no make up on. Well, at least she'd used some of Miha’s hairspray earlier today to feel a little more like a living being again.

"How have you been? How did you get through the end of term chaos? Did you get hurt?” The fact that she couldn't see anything didn't mean it hadn't already healed, right? Lena actually wanted to know why he'd come to visit after all this time, why he cared, but at the same time she knew that she probably wouldn't get an answer anyway.

As soon as the annoying healer guy had disappeared, Dimitri plucked the half-smoked cigarette from his metal case and lit it up with his silver lighter. He'd been smoking more and more in the past year and now he found his hands itching to perform the habitual motions more often than not. Dima had always said he could stop anytime, and maybe a year ago he'd meant it. Pale grey smoke unfurled from his lips, floating upwards in the hospital room. If anyone passing by outside in the hallway noticed, no one said anything.

She was coming back to school. Okay. Dimitri hadn't seen her for months and a part of him didn't even want to; he didn't even care if she came back. Or... maybe that was how he felt when he wasn't around her. There was a strange sort of duality here that he didn't know how to explain. It was so easy to write her off as annoying and unlikeable when he wasn't around her, but he felt so different when he was in her presence. Was that a normal thing, he wondered? Did people often decide whether they liked someone or not based on how close their proximity was to the other person?

Difference was, most people were shit whether he was around them or not. “Nah,” he said, knowing that it wasn’t really an answer. He’d probably say no whether he got hurt or not. She probably knew that. “School’s going back to normal though, did you hear?” No more Tomasz, no more shitty Koldovstoretz classes in their curriculum. Dimitri had heard that some of the Koldo kids were staying at Durmstrang, though he had no idea why they would. Didn't everyone hate them? The black haired teenager took another long drag of his cigarette, exhaled slowly and watched the smoke drift lazily upward. "No more mudbloods," he said blankly. Dimitri knew she hated that word - maybe that was why he'd said it. Iskra didn't mind it, he thought.

For a second she thought about saying something concerning the cigarette but then she decided against it and just rolled her eyes. He hadn't changed a bit, had he? It felt like it had been ages ago that they'd last talked but now that she thought about it, it had only been a few months and during that time his bad habits had probably only become worse. Smoking, drinking, bullying others... Yelena knew what he was like most of the time but somehow it wasn't enough to drive her away. At first she had looked for his company to annoy her father but it had soon become something else and now she couldn't imagine not being... friends with him. Even though they'd probably come pretty close to ending whatever this thing between them was.

"Good," she nodded, relieved that he hadn't suffered any major injuries. She coudn't imagine what the last few weeks at Durmstrang must have been like, especially that last day when the headmistress had finally lost her mind. Mihaela had told her a bit about it and of course she'd read about it in the newspapers but it was still pretty unimaginable. "Yes, I did. It was all over the papers. Talk about an experiment gone wrong..." The redhead wondered briefly what it would be like to come back to the old Durmstrang. Maybe it wasn't too bad that she'd have to repeat her sixth year now. If the curriculum was back to normal again, she wouldn't even have missed a thing.

Mudbloods... He knew she hated that word. Was it some kind of test she didn't understand? Lena furrowed her brows but didn't say anything. She might look a little better than she had during the past weeks but she was still weak, definitely too weak to start a fight. And besides, what would be the point in fighting right now? "And no more mandatory dance classes, huh?" She opted for a slight smirk as she watched him closely.

He felt skeptical for a moment when she said good. He didn't know why. Perhaps he was just a paranoid person. There was something about her constantly reminding him that she cared whether or not he got hurt that shut him up though. Sometimes he forgot about it all but when it was so simple and obvious that it was true, Dimitri didn't know what to say. Dima shook his head, glad that they'd moved on. "It was a stupid idea from the start," he said, coming a little closer and having a look at the chart by her bed. He couldn't understand a word of it, but he did wish he'd found out who'd hurt her. As much as he'd disliked her for periods of last year, he still would have beat the shit out of whoever had done it.

He considered saying something about the boys of Koldovstoretz. Some kind of homophobic slur waited at the tip of his tongue, ready to be used against those who'd offended him the most in the whole ordeal that had been the school merge. He kept himself in check though. Dimitri didn't even try to tell himself it wasn't for her that he stayed his tongue; it was painfully obvious to him that he didn't want to push too hard. Not now, with a gulf of months between them. Dimitri couldn't pretend that he hadn't been on Lev's side when the younger Klyk had started coughing things like Koldo slut into his fist when he'd walked by Lena. Dimitri hadn't even tried to stop his friends when they'd made crude jokes about her. He'd chuckled along with them. When he was away from her it was too easy to pretend he didn't like her. It was less easy now, even with all of that history.

"Weeks of detentions, you mean?" he responded, with a slight smirk of his own. He hadn't gone to dance classes. He'd smoked cigarettes with Iskra in the greenhouses and been punished for his absence later. "No more repeating content in necromancy. No more Bulgarian language classes." Dimitri took a moment to take a long drag on his cigarette. He blew the smoke out in a steady stream to one side, holding the thing to one side as he spoke. He thought he could stop smoking any time, but really his habit had worsened. "No more crazy bitch headmistress." After a moment, he added, "Hope the new one's less shit."

"I guess it was," she admitted, thinking back at the few months she had experienced. To her not everything had been bad. She'd made a few new friends, had even made out with a few new... well, friends, had learned some new magic and even the dance lessons had been kind of fun. Still, in her opinion the Ministry hadn't really thought it through. They could've started with merging the underclass students and letting the upperclass ones finish their education instead of changing the curriculum for everyone but the ones responsible definitely knew by now that they'd done a mistake. It was difficult to feel satisfied, though. Not after all the broken friendships and injuries and even deaths. She knew that Dimitri had witnessed the little Koldo boy's death but she wouldn't bring that up again. The past was the past.

He came closer, looking at her chart, and she turned her head a little so that she could watch him, red hair spilling over one shoulder. Yelena knew that his friends had talked badly about her and not even just behind her back but sometimes even right in her face. Lev Leskov had been one of the worst but luckily her skin had been thick enough not to care much about his insults. Sure, it had hurt a little to see Dima playing along but she would never have expected him to be a knight in shining armour, saving her from his friends. It probably should have told her that their relationship wasn't actually healthy but that wasn't something she wanted to think about right now.

"No more weird food plans," she added, wondering if the new administration would really change everything back to how it had been. "Talking about food... Who won the house cup? I really don't want to come back to school and get even worse food than I get here." The girl shuddered at the thought. "And I don't know but I doubt he or she could be worse than the last one, right?"

"Yeah," he said, with more conviction than he'd heard in her voice. Dimitri couldn't understand how she'd been on their side. He didn't know how she could have made friends with them or dated them. It felt like a betrayal at the time. It had highlighted all of the ways that they were incompatible, made him look at her in a different light. He wasn't looking at her like that now, though. Dimitri flicked his pale blue eyes over her bare face and unkempt hair. It was hard to hate her when she was right there in front of him, all small and red and still in hospital. It was hard to hate her when he'd ignored her for months and then impulsively lied his way out of summer school to come and visit her. Dimitri was not an impulsive person.

"Weird food plans," Dimitri agreed with a nod. The weird food plans were something he cared about far more than he'd like to admit. He skipped meals from time to time. Sometimes Dima looked at himself in the mirror and when he didn't like what he saw, he exercised with more fervour. Dimitri thought that diets and caring about appearances and shit was so girly and so wussy but he couldn't help but judge his own body harshly. No one knew about that, not even Lena. "Krovs won the cup again, so that should be fun next term," He said, changing the topic intentionally. Dima grimaced a little, putting Lena's charts back down where he'd found them. Punishment for losing the chip contest was often harsh, but who knew what it would be like next term. It could be worst than ever before.

"Yeah probably," Dimitri said vaguely, wondering what the Russian ministry was planning for Durmstrang in the upcoming term. Dimitri put his cigarette out with his fingers rather than drop it on the floor and squish it with his boots. He'd thought about that but figured she probably wouldn't like the smell. "Well, that's about all I came here for Red. Just thought I'd drop in and see that you were coming back next term." Dima gave a slight shrug. He was leaving.

"Oh great," she groaned, already dreading the first few weeks at Durmstrang. Last term they had been lucky and due to the merge there had been no punishment. Surely they wouldn't get so lucky twice in a row. "I leave and everything goes downhill." She wasn't serious but she still had to admit that it bothered her that Klyk lost again. She wasn't into house rivalries but if it meant that she'd get all the advantages if her house won, she'd fight for it. Ah well, better luck next time.

He was almost finished with his cigarette and it made her wonder how much longer he'd stay. They'd never actually talked much even though their late night meetings had sometimes lasted for hours. It had always been a mix of comfortable silence and bits of conversation but it was hard to feel comfortable in her hospital room. He probably felt it too. Smiling softly, the redhead nodded. She wasn't really disappointed that he'd leave again so soon. He'd come and that was all that mattered. It meant he cared. Even if he didn't say it out loud.

"Thanks for coming. It..." Lena looked away for a second before her hazel eyes focused back on him. "means a lot." And it did. More than she'd thought it would. "See you at school." The girl raised her hand to wave but he'd already turned around. In a few minutes Vadim would enter her room with a curious look on his face. She was sure about it.

It was too light, he decided. The room was too bright and the door was open and people walked past intermittently. This wasn't the way they'd interacted before. They almost never spent time together in such sunny places. Durmstrang was nestled between glaciers and desolate tundra, for Merlin's sake. Dimitri wondered, not for the first time, if whatever they had could really only exist in the midnight moments after everyone else went to bed. Quiet nights spent in cold rooms, with shadows to hide their faces in. They had overlapping social circles, so they spent time with groups too, but it wasn't the same. She wasn't the same as when they were alone and he certainly wasn't.

There was a version of her and a version of him that liked spending time together, but the rest? He was sure there were large chunks of him that she wouldn't like, if they didn't both pretend those parts didn't exist when they were together. "Yeah," he said, with a slight shrug. He didn't know what to say to that. You're welcome? Did she even know that he'd snuck out to see her? He didn't care to say. Dimitri just nodded. "See you," he said in response, turning away from her with a fistful of cigarette ash. Back to summer school, he thought bleakly, his boots making loud clipping echoes as he made his way out of the hospital.