Ronan was not surprised to see his curtains drawn when he arrived home; he had told Amir via Phoebe-mail that he would see his sister tonight. He breathed a sigh of relief all the same.

An orangey blur greeted him as he entered, shooting down from the second floor to careen into his chest like a small clay cannonball.

"Oh!"

Ronan pried Phoebe from his clothes to hold her in front of his face. Huge amber eyes studied him. "Hello there. You aren't quite who I was expecting."

Footsteps drew his gaze upward, to where the man he was expecting padded down the stairs, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. "He's been antsy ever since you sent back that last letter." (Felix's studies had determined that Phoebe was, sure enough, male. Amir refused to change his name.) "I think he was worried about you."

Ronan gave a halfhearted laugh. "Good to know I'm so transparent even a lizard can tell when I'm anxious."

Apparently satisfied with his inspection, Phoebe wriggled out of Ronan's grip. Amir came to stand in front of him, lifting both hands to brush the dried streaks from his cheeks.

"Hello, beautiful," he said. Ronan shut his eyes, leaning into his touch. "What do you need?"

In lieu of a response, Ronan swayed forward into Amir's chest. Amir wrapped him up, and Ronan sighed into his warmth.

"I'm not going back," he muttered.

"Okay," said Amir. "If you do, I'll be here."

Ronan did, in fact, go back.

Not two weeks later, he half-dangled from his sister's windowsill with his toolbelt open around his waist. His perch was precarious, but this route was more efficient, and the window hadn't seemed particularly hard to open. He proved himself right in about a minute, pushing past the curtains.

His eyes met dim light and the sight of his sister standing with her back to the door, wielding a brass clock like a weapon.

She heaved a great breath when she recognized Ronan, dropping her arm to her side as the stress left her shoulders. To her credit, the clock did look heavy. "Oh, good. I thought it might be you, but-" she stopped short, tensing once more. "You came back."

"That I did," Ronan said, drawing the curtains behind him. "I want to talk."

Elena nodded slowly, then quickly. "What of?"

Ronan stepped further inside to lean against one of her bedposts, very nonchalant, not at all questioning his own sanity for coming back here or contemplating how long Bandit would hold a grudge if he swan-dove right back out the window after summoning her mid-sleep.

"Oh!" Elena's hands came suddenly to her cheeks, flustered, before wrapping around herself. She hurried to one corner of her room, stopping before her wardrobe. "How crude of me, greeting you in my nightclothes" - as if she hadn't been dressed this way the last times they'd met - "I should-"

She threw open the door, grabbed the first item her hand landed on, then froze, turning over her shoulder to Ronan. Changing while he stood meters away would hardly improve her manners. She eyed a door along the opposite wall, probably to an ensuite, then looked his way again. Ronan met her ruffled stare with disinterest.

"Right, okay, of course." Elena hesitated, then let go of the garment and turned stiffly away from the wardrobe, clasping her hands in front of her. "What is it you-" the wardrobe door clipped her side. Clearing her throat, she sidestepped and shut it gently. "Wanted to discuss?"

Ronan stated plainly, "I want to know what you've been doing all these years."

Surprise loosened Elena's expression. Ronan waited for a why, contemplating whether he would share the mean-spirited, mildly pathetic truth. If you've been happy, I want to be bitter about it. If you've been miserable, I want the satisfaction.

No, he decided, he mostly certainly would not admit that if she asked. But she didn't ask. She leaned against the wardrobe and said, "I have...read. I have advanced my skills as needed. And," Elena floundered for something else but ultimately fell flat, turning toward the closest window. "That is all."

It was a profoundly underwhelming answer.

"Skills?" Ronan asked.

"Drawing, dancing, singing, cooking, sewing, embroidery. Piano as well, though I fear I am not where I should be."

She listed them like one might an itinerary. "You don't seem too fond of your hobbies."

Elena shrugged. "I like to read." Ronan noticed the book on her duvet, still open like she'd been mid-page when he broke in. "The rest, I wouldn't quite call hobbies."

"Why bother, then?"

She glanced up. "Because I am a lady."

"And that means..."

The puff she let out could have been a sigh or a laugh. "It means that I must be proficient in both tending and entertaining, and I must be intelligent but not too thoughtful, and I must at all times mind my mouth and my expression and how high I hold my head or risk my chances of securing a husband."

"And is that all you care about?" Ronan scoffed. "Securing a husband?"

To his surprise, Elena's eyes drew narrow. "It is all I am allowed to care about." And when Ronan didn't have an immediate response to that, she repeated, "Because I am a lady." She wandered to her bedside to set down the clock and smoothed her hands down her twin braids. "My value is that of the man closest to me." Lifting the candle on her nightstand, she slid onto the bed so Ronan had to turn to look at her. "You ask what I have done in seven years? I have pleased and presented, and that is all. I apologize if that disappoints you."

Ronan thought of the women in his life. "The most free-spirited people I know are ladies."

He watched as her eyes flickered with something like envy. She opened her mouth, maybe to voice it, then seemed to realize that would be in poor taste. "Would they choose to live the way I do, if they could?" she asked instead.

Ronan thought of Tony first. She had a penchant for luxury. But at the cost of brashness, adventure, promiscuity, autonomy- she would never. Sadie would laugh in the face of all of it. The mansion, the dress-code, the prospect of marriage.

He didn't voice any of this, but Elena's somber smile was knowing.

And Ronan knew now where she fell on the scale of happy to miserable, though she hadn't said it in as many words. Instead of feeling satisfied, he found himself drafting up Reason #56.

"It will improve once you marry, at least?" he asked before he could catch himself.

"I will marry for a title, not for love."

"But what if-"

"There is no what if." Elena's grip tightened on the candleholder. "Pardon me. I do not mean- I should not have snapped." Belatedly, she added, "I am grateful for all that I have. Very much so."

"Exchange happiness for comfort, is it?" Ronan mused. "How tiresome."

"The people around me are tiresome."

He hummed, wrapping his hand as far as he could around the bedpost and leaning his temple to it. "The people around you," he echoed. "Used to call 'em the 'glass people' - take off the jewelry and you can see right through them," he recited from his journal with a dark laugh. "What makes you so different?"

"I knew you," said Elena, immediately. Ronan's fingers curled against the wood.

"Though if I were to follow your metaphor," she continued thoughtfully, "I should say I'm more like porcelain than glass."

"And why's that?"

"Bit more dressed up. Bit less transparent. I lie up close, and I get away with it."

Ronan didn't know whether she was referring to her history with him, or something else.

"You don't like any of them?" he asked. "You used to speak so highly of your parents."

When Elena huffed, it sent a loose strand of white hair floating from her face. "That was before they expected anything of me. My mother is a perfectionist obsessed with appearances, and my father...well, we are not close the way we once were."

"What changed?"

Elena looked at him, and all Ronan could say was, "Oh."

"How can I forgive him?" she said before he could finish reeling. Had his brief presence really been so significant? "I had the wildest fantasies, you know. Of the adventures we would have once he finally came around and marched to your house and asked you to come stay with us. I thought it only a matter of time."

So had Ronan. Perhaps naivety ran in the family. Or perhaps they had just been children. He admitted, "I imagined the opposite. I daydreamed about etiquette lessons, of all things."

Elena scrunched her nose. "They are not fun, I promise. Though I suppose they might have been, with you."

Ronan looked to the window, where the purple curtains rustled in a faint breeze, and got the feeling he had lingered too long.

"So," Elena said, drawing him back her way. "How did you become- er, the person you are now?"

A thief, she didn't say. On her face he found concern, but there was curiosity there, too. Even a touch of excitement. It was too reminiscent of the young girl who had soaked up his stories like a sponge. And here, caged behind his ribs, was the urge to indulge her. To storytell with hand gestures and sound effects and voices, just this side of exaggerating, until there were stars in her eyes.

Ronan clammed up. He hadn't expected nostalgia, didn't want it either. "I should leave."

Elena's face fell. "Oh," she said. "Of course. Won't you come again?"

"I won't," said Ronan. He made for the window, drawn tight like a wind-up toy that had been twisted to its limit and held there.

"But if I do, it'll be exactly one week from today."

At his house, Amir asked him again, "What do you need?" and Ronan's answer was,

"A distraction."

Which was how he wound up flat on his back against the sheets, flushed and squirming as Amir took his time reacquainting himself with every inch of his neck, his chest, his hips. A hot tongue traced the lines of his abdomen; keen lips sucked small red marks against his skin, each already fading by the time he started on the next.

Ronan ached so badly he thought he might burst, breath catching every time he met searing dark eyes. Amir bit down just below his navel and Ronan keened, turning his cheek into the pillow as fingers finally hooked into his waistband and pulled.

One of his ankles was still trapped in his pants when Amir froze and made a sound like "guh."

Slowly, he slipped Ronan's foot free. "I...may have miscalculated."

Ronan pushed onto his forearms. Embarrassment flooded his cheeks red when he saw his own legs clad in silk. It was so light on his skin - felt so right on his skin - he had forgotten he was wearing anything.

He started to draw his legs away and was met with immovable resistance - Amir's hands, digging hard into his thighs right where the stockings ended. Ronan looked up and saw his pupils blow out, saw him run his tongue along his bottom lip like his mouth had gone dry, and very quickly understood.

Ronan went hot all over.

Situated between his legs, Amir looked back and forth helplessly, like he didn't know what to do with himself. "I want to rip them," he said, distressed.

"Don't you dare."

He did the next best thing, sinking his teeth into the skin right above the lace, and Ronan fell back into the sheets with a sigh.

Amir followed the bite with a gentle kiss, like an apology. "I am," he spoke against the mark, lifting Ronan's leg over his shoulder, "Moved, by you."

Ronan laughed breathlessly. "You say it like something religious." After thinking that over (very slowly, because Amir was leaving a trail of kisses down his leg through the fabric), he added, "'Suppose I wouldn't mind an excuse for you to worship me."

Amir grinned against Ronan's ankle. "As if I don't already," he said before sliding off the bed and onto his knees.

𓃥𓃥𓃥

When Ronan climbed the wall of the Dumas manor exactly one week later, the window was already cracked open, and candlelight shone through a gap in the curtains.

Elena straightened from a slouch on her bed, setting aside the book she'd been reading. It was different from last week's. She was dressed this time around, clad in a pale blue evening gown with short ruffles for sleeves.

Ronan sat on the floor next to her bed, ignored her invitations to join her on the mattress or take the loveseat, and said, "I am going to tell you where I've been."

Elena's mouth clamped shut. Then opened, only to close again without saying whatever was on her mind - judging by the look on her face, something placating. You don't have to.

The thought wouldn't have even crossed her mind when they were younger, eager as she'd been. He wondered if being boring was part of becoming a lady, too.

Elena gestured encouragingly, and Ronan told his story.

He couldn't pinpoint what exactly had drawn him here tonight. He hadn't considered his intentions, wasn't even sure what response he sought. Guilt, surely - but Elena had already shown him plenty of that.

And if he was only seeking guilt, he wouldn't spend so much time on the nicer parts. But Elena smiled when he started talking about Vito. It was smaller than he remembered, more subdued, and yet so much like his memory that he dawdled over that part of the story, the part about first meetings and newfound drive. Traces of the Elena from years before were right there in her eyes, brightening at the first notes of adventure. Full of admiration, and a wistfulness Ronan hadn't understood when he was young.

Somewhere inside him, the Ronan from years before closely followed her expression, anticipating her smile, her surprise. Bracing despite himself for disapproval, relaxing when he found none. It was all so very familiar. Ronan had loved this, telling her stories, watching her react.

Those stories had never taken so dark a turn, though. Ronan retold his downfall with the sort of impassivity that came with time. Elena absorbed it with such a miserable look on her face, he almost wanted to stop. It was no fun when she looked like that.

Not that this was meant to be fun in the first place.

Amidst sympathy and grief, Ronan did find guilt, and it wasn't all that comforting. There was anger, too; he didn't know what to make of that. Elena wore it unnaturally.

"I'd rather you didn't pity me," he said, because he'd gone as far as he was willing, and all she'd done since was glare down at her lap.

Elena looked affronted by this, but she smoothed her brow and straightened her lip with practiced speed, so that her face was almost neutral when she said,

"Well I do hope you've at least had the last laugh."

A handful of seconds ticked by on the brass clock as Ronan debated whether he'd heard right.

"The last laugh?"

The candle was burning low. He blamed its uneven shadows for the look he thought crossed her face.

"Surely you've at least tried to get back at him. The way you did with father."

"I wasn't getting back at him. I only did it to help a friend."

"Well, I'll have you know he was furious."

In the mess of everything, Ronan hadn't stopped to consider his father's reaction, past worrying for his own ass if Elena ratted him out. "He was?"

"Still is!" Was she laughing? "He's been ranting and raving for weeks. You should have seen his face when he saw the chandelier. He very nearly turned purple."

That had been pretty good handiwork. Smugness must have shown on his face, because Elena smiled, and it hadn't been a trick of the light. She looked- conniving.

"That feels good, does it not?" she pried. Devious was an foreign look on her. He regretted ever thinking her boring.

It did feel nice - vindicating. But, "To act out after so long would be childish."

Elena tilted her head, and her eyes seemed to reflect the tiny orange flame. "Of what value is maturity when your youth was stolen?" This intensity was unfamiliar, too. "I think you've more than earned the right to act childish."

"Sounds like you've thought about this before," Ronan said instead of answering, thrown off-kilter.

Elena slid off the bed to reach beneath it. "There is a passage in a book I'm rather fond of." She sat across from him, cross-legged and barefoot and somehow entirely new. The book in her hands was small and unimpressive. He had to squint to read its cover: Miss Lovelady, by P.A. Bishop. Elena opened to a marked page and read aloud,

"She scowled down at pallid, wrinkled skin from behind the black of her veil. She held no animosity toward her grandfather and found little grief in his death. Her bitterness, she directed at the procession around her, at the rows of lilies arranged for this man who had died once in eighty years. Elloise had died thrice as many times, in a quarter of the time, and had never once been mourned.'"

She turned the page. "'Her first death had come, as it did for every lady, between the ages of twelve and sixteen, when she was first deemed to finally have value as a woman rather than a child. The second, when that value...'" Elena glanced up and saw Ronan's bewildered stare. "Ah, well." She lowered the book quickly, suddenly awkward. "That was a roundabout way of saying, I would act far more immaturely if I could."

"Join me, then," he blurted. Elena slammed the book shut in her surprise. Ronan wanted to slam his fist into his mouth. He couldn't recall deciding to go through with the last laugh thing, let alone that he wanted her there.

But Elena asked, "Do you want me there?" and Ronan-

Ronan wanted her somewhere, that much he couldn't deny. Somewhere that wasn't here. He wanted to bring her into his space before he could fall back into the pattern of only stepping into hers. And if she would willingly come along, then that had to mean something, right?

So he said, "I think so."

"Alright."

"Shouldn't you ask what you're getting into before you agree?"

"I don't much think I care."

"You might have to get your hands dirty."

"I am dying to get my hands dirty." Elena grinned then, bigger than he'd seen since they were children. "How will we do it?"

And he grinned back. "Only one way to hurt a thief."

That night, when Amir asked what he needed, Ronan said,

"The date and time of that job you were telling me about."

And on that date, at that time, Ronan once again found Elena's window open and waiting for him. He didn't climb through this time, just folded his arms over the sill and poked his head through the curtains and said, "What on Earth are you wearing?"

Elena stumbled in her pacing and turned to the window, giving Ronan a full view of a heavily layered black dress with extravagant puffed sleeves. "You wrote to dress in darks!" she squeaked. "Mourning dress is all I have."

"Was the veil necessary?"

She hurriedly tossed the mesh over her hair, then started to remove it altogether.

"No time for all that." Ronan waved his hand. "Just come on."

Elena hesitated, a tortured look on her face, before blowing out her candle and rushing to the window, only to freeze with her hands against the casing when she realized he expected her to climb down with him.

"Oh, you can't be serious."

"You said you wanted to get your hands dirty," Ronan reminded. He eyed shiny elbow-length black gloves. Close enough.

He decided, a bit unkindly, not to tell her there were two very strong, very fast horses waiting to catch her if she slipped, though he wasn't sure that would comfort her anyway. She didn't look down long enough to notice, too focused on her every foothold. Climbing beneath her, Ronan reached up to steady her around the ankle whenever she wobbled, until he got close enough to jump the rest of the way.

"You're mean," came Sadie's voice at his side.

"You're laughing," he rebutted, to which she laughed some more.

It was well past the time she normally slept, but she was bouncing on her toes. She had pried Ronan's plans for the night out of him that afternoon, and hadn't even let him finish explaining before inviting herself along. Which was just as well, he thought as he watched Elena continue picking carefully down even though she could land easily from where she was.

"Jump!" Sadie whisper-yelled.

Elena tripped more than jumped, startled by the new voice. Saved by a pair of hands on her back, she didn't fall very far nor very hard - not that she would've, even if Sadie hadn't hurried forward to brace her.

"Easy there, princess."

Elena whirled around, eyes going progressively wider as she first took in Sadie, then the pair of pegasi, then Sadie again, stalling over black overalls and mud-encrusted boots.

"I'm...not a princess?" she said like she wasn't sure herself.

Sadie dropped her hands from Elena's shoulders as she started toward Bandit and Devil. "Sure look like one," she remarked over her shoulder, hoisting herself onto Devil's back with ease to grin down at them. "We ready to go?"

Ronan faced his sister. "Sure you wanna come along? You don't have to."

That seemed to shake her from her stupor. "Yes," Elena said without hesitating. She wiped her hands against her skirt and raised her chin. "Besides, I love horses." And she marched right up to Bandit and fucking courtsied.

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

Ronan finally allowed himself to laugh, a bit disbelieving.

𓃢𓃢𓃢

Song for this chapter: Seven by Taylor Swift

One of my favorite songs, and so very Elena :)