[edited: 05/08/2017]

Remy knocked sheepishly on what Hilda had pointed out to be Maksim's bedroom door. The moment that she had arrived back, she had wanted nothing more than to go to bed, but she was sure that she would not be able to do much sleeping if Maksim was still angry—why he was angry, she could still not quite fathom.

"Max?" she called, and was met with a low grunt. Sighing, she tried the handle, but it would not move even an inch. "Maksim, please let me in."

His reply was muffled. "Must you always be so irritating? I wish to be left alone."

"And you will be as soon as you talk to me."

She heard him huff before the door handle clicked and sparked with a blindingly bright light, and when she tried the handle again, reluctant not to burn her fingers, the door opened with ease. "Using magic for doors. Really?" was the first thing that she said. "Can't you use a lock and key like everybody else?"

Maksim was stood at his window, half of his body illuminated by the dark pink glow of the sky and the other golden from his bedroom lights. "If you are here to lecture me about my door locking preferences, you may as well leave now. Besides, everybody else here is just as likely to use magic. Remember that it is you who is the oddity here."

"And don't I know it?" Remy rolled her eyes and plonked onto the end of Maksim's bed, which was covered in silk sheets. His bedroom was not at all the way she might have imagined it; there were no decorations, no fancy wallpaper the way there was in the hallways, just a few bookshelves, a small beige armchair, and a wardrobe in the corner.

"Why are you so angry?" she asked when her previous question bade no reply. "If this works, you could get your brother back."

"By losing you?" he retorted, his voice no calmer than it had been in the trial. His expression, reflected in the glass of the window, was thunderous.

Remy was taken aback by this and could not quite form a response at first. "You can't lose something you never had," she whispered finally. "It's not like you care much about my well-being."

"No?" He turned to look at her incredulously. "Is that honestly what you think, Remy?"

She was beginning to get angry, too, so she stood up to face him, though it didn't make much of a difference. He was still at least a foot taller than her. "Isn't it the truth? Or have you broken out of your superiority complex enough to realise that I'm not just some stupid mortal girl with no purpose or importance?"

Now it was Maksim's turn to look shocked, and he did so with wide eyes and slightly parted lips. He shook his head wordlessly, running a hand through his auburn hair, which seemed much lighter in the strangely twilit room. Remy thought that it was the first time she had ever seen him speechless.

"That's what I thought," she said finally, taking his silence to mean the former. "So why are you so angry?"

He sat down, his hands clasped together and his head bowed. "Is it so difficult to believe that I do not want you to get hurt? That perhaps I would like to get you back to the Mortal World in one piece?"

"Yes." She pursed her lips. "You know, if this is about you feeling guilty, you don't have to. This was my choice."

"It is not about me feeling guilty," he said, without much conviction. "I just know what my brother is capable of. You could have been hurt much worse than you were yesterday."

"But I wasn't." She sat down beside him, her leg almost touching his. Almost. She would not dare shuffle a few inches to meet him. Already, she could feel the warmth radiating from him, and in turn, it seemed to remove the cold that had been trapped in her bones ever since she had slept in an underground cell. "I'm fine."

His eyes met hers and he seemed to contemplate something before his anger dissipated and his usual mockery returned. She was glad. "Yes, I suppose it would have to take something much worse than my brother to take you down."

"I live in a house full of kids," she responded. "If I can deal with that, I can certainly deal with a few warlocks in trench coats."

Maksim chuckled quietly, and Remy smiled at the sound. She hadn't heard him laugh like that before. It sounded like waves washing onto the sand; like her beach; like home. It made her feel slightly better than she had done before. It made her feel as though her body was light and she was floating, and she found herself wishing that he would laugh more often that she might feel this way again. 

"I have no doubt that you can," he said.

* * *

It had been silent for a while now, and Maksim couldn't help but enjoy the peace. It was comfortable, even if Remy was still sat on his bed, staring out of the window as though this sunset would be the last one she ever saw. She had obviously forgotten her promise to leave him alone, though he didn't mind much now he had calmed down. 

He was glad that she was distracted. It gave him a chance to sort his own thoughts out; whether he would continue to be angry that Remy was putting herself in danger or let it go and do whatever he could to protect her anyway. Most of all, though, he was trying to understand why he had cared, so much so that he had disrespected the entire Council, including the Principle Warlock. He wasn't sure that he wanted to know the answer.

Remy was lent on her elbow, though it looked as though it would slip from under her at any moment. She was exhausted, and rightly so. He had heard her tossing and turning in the cells all night. Dirt caked her clothes and blackened the crevices of her face, but he still enjoyed looking at her, at the way shadows passed over her each time the sun changed its position in the sky and the way her eyes darkened to a deep gold or lightened to a bright silver depending on where it had moved to.

"You should go to bed," he said finally, though he wasn't sure he really meant it. After Ackmard's attack, he wasn't sure he wanted to let her out of his sight for even a second.

"You can't see the sunset from my room," she responded, and her words were heavy with tiredness.

"Any excuse to stay in my bedroom."

A ghost of a smile curved against her pale lips, but her eyes never left the window. Sighing, he hauled himself up and grabbed the clothes he usually slept in from his wardrobe—a loose silk shirt and matching trousers. "I need to wash all of this dirt off me. I will be back soon."

She nodded, though he didn't think she'd really been listening.

He was glad when he got into the bathroom and started the shower with a click of his magic. It soothed his sore muscles—the result of sleeping on cold concrete and having a small run-in with his brother—and cleansed his skin of the dirt. He forced himself not to think of all the things he wanted to; of his brother, of Remy, of the two put together and what the outcome would be.

He stayed until the water began to burn his back and shoulders and then quickly dried himself off and put his sleeping gear on. When he returned, he was not surprised to find Remy sprawled out on his bed, her body still on top of the covers. Smiling ever so slightly, he crept as silently as he could to where she was lay and placed a blanket that had been hanging at the end of his bed over her.

Then, he sat in his armchair and looked at her the way he always wanted to but never allowed himself to, and he wondered if this was one of the moments that he might remember for the rest of his immortal life.

She was beautiful; it was easier to admit that to himself while she was sleeping, looking as peaceful as she did, as though no matter what might happen around her, she would not be affected by it. He wondered whether she was dreaming, or if she was simply in that place that one often visited in one's sleep, where they existed physically but not mentally. He wanted to join her there, but he wasn't sure that he could ever really join Remy anywhere. She was too much of an individual. She was not made to be followed or bound to anybody else. She was only made to be herself and do the things that she wanted to do. Perhaps that was why she had grown on him so much. She was the person that he had always tried and wanted to be.

"You silly little mortal girl," he murmured to himself softly, quietly enough that she wouldn't awaken. He twirled his ring, the one that Remy had returned to him, around his thumb, his eyes glazing over. What he really meant to say was 'you silly little warlock boy,' but he didn't know which of them was worse, which of them he was more angry at; himself, for thinking of her the way that he was now, or her, for changing everything that he had thought he knew about mortals and making his life much more complex than it had been before, evil brother and all.

He supposed he wasn't really angry, just confused. Everything about her confused him; her blonde hair spilling over her shoulders like golden sunlight, the way her round face looked so effortlessly captivating when it wasn't carved into an expression of worry or insolence, the way her lips seemed to curve naturally upwards as though she was constantly suppressing a smile. He was confused because he hadn't noticed these things about anyone else before, and because more than all of that, he enjoyed how she was when she was awake even more, when she was coming out with some witty remark that matched Maksim's own humour, when she was saying something that changed his whole belief system the way she had in the trial today, or when she was gazing up at something the way she had been before, probably appreciating every bit of it while she could.

Once he had forced himself to look away from the girl curled up on his bed, he slept well for the first time in years.

AN: yikes someones's falling in love :/ don't know if I like this chapter. I wish I could have added more but I don't want too much to happen between them at once. Let me know what you think and to anybody reading, thank you!