In the clear? (Dorian/Christine's Family)

[Aleksandra "Lex" Eiriksen]

"How are you?" she asked with a little more concern. Christine was alive, she was strong, and she would be alright. Dorian was killing himself with guilt over Christine, over Lex, over the things that he had no control over. She worried about him.

[Dorian Humbert]

He ignored her question. 

"He has more. He kept them underground, in the forest. There's at least nine...there were at least nine." Nine kidnapped girls. Ten including Christine. Ten souls forever scarred because he let this monster slip through his fingers. Ten black marks on his own soul.

[Aleksandra "Lex" Eiriksen]

"More...?" Lex lost her breath when he said nine. Nine more girls? Godric no. Lex entered the room fully then.

"We got Christine back. We'll find him." she said trying to encourage her brother. She put a hand on his shoulder.

"Christine will get stronger."

[Dorian Humbert]

"Alek got Christine back," he corrected her. He still wasn't sure what that had been about. It had been difficult to get anything out of Alek except an insult.

[Aleksandra "Lex" Eiriksen]

Lex smiled briefly, proud of her twin. "He's very familiar with the woods." she said by way of explanation.

"Honestly Dorian," she said before sitting down at the foot of Christine's bed, " How are you?"

[Dorian Humbert]

His eyes followed her as she crossed the room and sat on the foot of the bed. "Honestly? I don't know." Dorian was feeling too many things and simultaneously not enough. It was impossible to tell which emotion was the dominant one, it changed from moment to moment. And everything he felt was muted, covered by a high-pitched humming that vibrated deep within him.

[Aleksandra "Lex" Eiriksen]

"Let me take a stab at it." she said stretching her hands over her knee. She refused to wear the hospital gown any longer and asked for jeans and a t-shirt.

"You're happy." she started, "Relieved that the girl you love is alive."

"You're worried." she said as though she were counting his emotions on her fingers, " About the other girls, about Christine, about every bloody thing under the sun because-"

"You're feeling guilty." she concluded, "That he got to her, to me, to them in the first place. And you're angry..."

She said the last emotion on a sigh, "You're angry because she lied to you and it's made you question everything you believe in as well as yourself. And you can't yell at her because, See above: You're happy."

"That about cover it?"

[Dorian Humbert]

Dorian watched Lex tick off his feelings as if she were reading a list. His chest was tightening as she articulated everything he felt inside and when she was finished Dorian gave a doleful smile. "Why are you so smart?"

[Aleksandra "Lex" Eiriksen]

Lex wanted to reply that she was his sister and she knew him, but she couldn't. She settled once again by saying, "I'm your partner. And I'm a woman, we're much better at articulating these things." she answered with a shrug in the way that Lex was always making light of everything.

It wasn't that Lex didn't understand the severity of the situation. She did. But she didn't have time to waste tiptoeing around the truth.

"So what trips you out more? That she's younger than you thought or that she's related to practically bloody royalty?"

[Dorian Humbert]

Dorian gave a strangled laugh. "You mean does it trip me out that she's related to the richest people in most of the UK and only about half of the entire Auror Department?" That did bother him. It would bother anyone, if it had been kept secret from them. 

"She's a child, Lex. She hasn't even left school yet. She needs a permission slip to go to Hogsmeade on the weekends."

[Aleksandra "Lex" Eiriksen]

Lex laughed at his first assessment. Indeed it had made Lex apprehensive as well when Christine confessed who she was. But Lex had the benefit of knowing what it was like to be "practically royalty", seeing as how she was in a similar situation with her brother. Another secret that was being kept from Dorian.

"Clearly she's not a child." Lex said with a practiced eye roll, " And something tells me she hasn't asked for permission to do anything in quite a long while."

"No I think her family tripped me out more, she doesn't act like a princess. I mean the suite at the Avalon should have been my first clue that she had money, but I didn't know she had that much money. Besides, women are often much more mature then men." she said lightly, then looking at Dorian she furrowed her brow.

"Except you...I think you're probably more mature than the senior citizens on the eighth floor of the hospital."

[Dorian Humbert]

Every thing Lex said of Christine was true. Technically, legally she wasn't a child. She clearly never asked permission for anything, seeing as they had met in a completely different country. And she was rather mature for her age. 

But Dorian had already argued these points with himself numerous times.

Legally she was an adult. But she was still in school. And she most certainly was not of legal age in Egypt.

Christine probably never had to ask permission for anything in her life. Unless all of her stories had been lies as well, which he logically couldn't rule out the possibility of, she was used to doing whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. She was spoiled.

And yes she was mature for her age. But as Lex so delicately pointed out, Dorian was basically an old man.

"She's eight years my junior. I was in my first year at Hogwarts when she was toilet training."

[Aleksandra "Lex" Eiriksen]

"Wow, you're really hung up about it aren't you?" she asked, "The age part, not the lie." she said studying his face.

"She may be seventeen years old Dorian, but that doesn't discount who she is or what she feels. Society calls her a woman, and the Christine I know is fully capable of loving the way a woman loves."

[Dorian Humbert]

Yes, Christine could love the way a woman could. And he had loved her as a man. When she was supposed to be in school.

"It's difficult to separate the two, the lying and the deception. She's not who I thought she was and she didn't trust me enough to tell me so. But yes, I am hung up on it. An eight year difference might be nothing in high society, but I was raised differently. My parents were a year apart from each other. They went to school together. That's how the rest of us do it." Dorian and Christine didn't even overlap at Hogwarts for a single year.

[Aleksandra "Lex" Eiriksen]

"Oh, and you're an expert on the rest of us are you?" she asked looking at him the way only Lex could look at him.

Finally she took her intent stare away and shrugged, "I understand being mad that she lied. And I can understand you having some weird nobility thing about being older than her. But don't try and justify your problem with Christine's age as some kind of rule of society. Of any society." She hopped off the bed and walked toward the door.

"It's your life Dorian. You decide who you spend it with, but you don't get to make the rules for everyone. You can decide not to be with her anymore, which I think is a mistake by the way, she needs you now more than ever, but you don't get to decide who is proper and improper for her to date because that's how the rest of us do it. Speaking as part of the rest of us."

She hung in the doorway, "You should get some sleep, you look like hell."

[Dorian Humbert]

Lex was feeling well enough to lecture him now and some part of Dorian was glad for that. He watched her cross the room and linger in the doorway, but after she had gone he turned back and looked at Christine. He wanted desperately to get over the age difference, her youth. But even if that were possible, could he trust her?