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After the credits finished rolling and the ending music stopped, they both stared at the black screen in silence for a whole minute.
She was the first one to open her mouth.
“I know,” Deryn spoke slowly, trying to put her thoughts in order, “I said it was fine when you asked about the whole adaptation thing, but…”
“Yes?”
“What the hell was this?!” She yelled, gesturing towards the screen, then turned to Alek, who just frowned in response.
“I… don't know,” he muttered, doubtful, still looking at the screen as if he was searching for answers on it. Or maybe he was just doing it to avoid her gaze. He was probably feeling self-conscious about it, and, while Deryn didn’t mean it that way and didn’t like to see him falling into that old habit of his, she could also see why it happened again.
Years ago, after a lot of adventuring first aboard the Leviathan and then as agents of the Zoological Society, they had decided to settle down, and that had also meant to prepare for things like people digging for their story. Alek might no longer be royalty, but he was still a known name to the public and the press, and they'd always be eager for more gossip. After giving it some thought, they figured it would be better to announce the truth on their own terms, lest some nasty reporter (and God, did they know about those) expose them by writing whatever they wanted.
The announcement that the former heir of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire had married a commoner received attention, but luckily not as much as it could have. Given that said empire had been dissolved and its former people were not precisely fond of the Habsburgs, the news was taken as a welcome gesture of contact with the real world from him, and nothing else.
Well, that, and…
It seemed that people went bonkers for love stories during wartime, as theirs had been.
And so, after turning down enough requests for interviews, Alek decided to take matters into his own hands (again) and just… wrote their story in a book. It was easier, and he could choose which and how the events would be presented on it.
Deryn had been more than a little dubious about the whole idea, but it was hard not to get excited when Alek talked about it all day, every day, telling her about his progress or asking her some questions when memory failed him. In the end, she even ended up drawing some sketches in her free time, and Alek and the publisher liked them so much that she felt compelled to finish them. They had ended up in the finished book and all!
And well, the adaptation into audiovisual format wasn’t really expected, but Alek had seemed thrilled about that too, so Deryn agreed to it.
In hindsight, it might not have been the best idea.
“They… certainly took a lot of creative liberties,” Alek added, reservation clear in his voice. That was, in Deryn’s opinion, his typical way of putting it politely: in other words, bullshit, and also a huge understatement.
“You don’t say,” she rolled her eyes. “I mean, what was that part about me singing?!”
“It was a lovely melody,” he observed as he turned towards her, smiling a little, “and you do have a nice voice.”
“You-” she stopped, only to sigh. Of course he'd say that. Alek was a hopeless ninny in love with her, and it was both endearing and a little embarrassing to still receive those kinds of comments from him, even after all this time together.
Perhaps he confused her fluster with annoyance, because he tried again.
“Well, at least Bovril was cute?” he suggested, raising a brow. Yes, she couldn’t deny it, even if the show hadn’t been allowed to represent the beast accurately. Some problems about intellectual rights and state secrets. But nevertheless-
“He didn’t even get lines!” she retorted.
“An outrage!” the beast added as it stood up from the place it was resting, the highest point of the back of the sofa they were sitting on. It stretched its body before jumping to Deryn’s shoulder, as if to support her stance on the matter.
“Yes. They sacrificed a lot of characterization due to the lack of time. I think they did a disservice to Volger, too.” Alek conceded and then grimaced, most likely imagining what the count would say if he was still around to know about the adaptation. Or the book. “To be honest, I think the only one who was well-portrayed was Dr. Barlow-”
“Too well!” Deryn interjected. “What was that about knowing my secret from the beginning? She didn’t know until I told her! You should have seen her face!”
“I still regret missing that…” Alek admitted in a soft voice, barely more than a whisper.
“And what about the ending?!” She went again, her focus back to complaining about the show. “Everyone knows you renounced your claim on the throne. Why would they change that?”
“I don’t know...” Alek brought a hand to his head, scratching it in confusion. “Maybe they’re hoping for the studio to approve a sequel?”
“Sequel with what? We can’t talk about the missions we took for the Society!”
“They don't know about that. They shouldn't, right? Oh, no, what if they know?” he turned to her, his hand dropping to cover his mouth. The alarm was evident in his eyes.
“They can't prove anything, Alek, you know it,” she reminded him with a gentler voice, as she put a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to ease his fears. He looked at her again.
“They can always invent something…”
“What?” she asked amiably. “People writing fictional scenarios about us? What a daft idea.”
“A daft idea,” Bovril repeated, staring directly at the other side of the screen for some reason.
“Anyway, it wasn’t exactly a big production, so I doubt they'll approve another season,” she added.
“Well, you do have a point…” Alek accepted. His words drifted on as they fell into silence again.
Truth to be told, there was something else that was nagging Deryn on the inside, something more important than all her past critiques, but she didn’t know how to put it into words. Then again… she had always been better at action than at speeches.
And Alek would get it, she knew.
So she just gulped and took a deep breath.
“I knew it was almost impossible to put my men in the story…”
“I’m sorry, Deryn,” he said, taking her hand in his. “I know it was important for you.”
“But they killed Newkirk instead,” she complained, hating how her voice broke. Replaying her past mistakes hurt, yes, but she prepared herself for that before they sat to watch the series. Imagining what could have happened, what else they could have lost, who else they could have lost, instead… ”They killed Hoffman and Bauer off too, Alek. And Klopp! What did good old Klopp do to deserve this?!”
“I know…” he sighed, dropping her hand to hold his face instead. His next words came out muffled. “Yes, maybe this was a mistake…”
Oh, no. Maybe Deryn had been a little too vicious with her comments, but she actually felt bad for him. Alek had been so happy when they requested permission to make the adaptation, so excited to see their story reaching the screen, and he was probably so disappointed right now. And she was just rubbing salt into the wound.
“Anyway…” she said with a deliberate light voice, “at least that dumrag Malone didn’t get to appear.”
“Yes,” he nodded, the corners of his lips rising a little and his shoulders lowering a bit. Small wins, both the reporter’s absence and Alek’s smile.
“And I liked the striped suit very much,” she added, a little more confident.
“Me too,” Alek finally got his hands out of his face and turned to look at her, a little sparkle of hope in his green eyes. “Is there any chance you…?”
Deryn just gave him a smirk.