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The knife sank into his body, and Alina regretted it almost immediately. She tried to stop the flow of blood, but by the way it spurts out in coughs, Alina knew that she hit true. Her hands stained red, so red it seemed like they never had been another color; vaguely, she wondered if cleaning them would ever get them rid of the smell of iron.
“I’m sorry.” She muttered, and Aleksander’s eyes flashed for a moment. He laughed, but it was humorless, and all it did was stain his teeth red as he fell. Alina grabbed him, holding Aleksander in her lap. He would be gone soon, so this was meaningless.
The pain inside her was blindingly white, like her own powers - she can’t feel them as strongly as before, as if they’re oozing out with Aleksander’s blood -, and Alina bit her lower lip.
“Are you, Alina?” He asked. With weak hands (who’d have thought Aleksander could be weak? Alina’s mind can’t rationalize this, not right now), raising his hand to touch her face. His skin grew cold, clammy, and Alina held it in place as she felt her powers fading.
“I… I…” Gagged words: the truth stuck itself in her throat, but how could she admit she regretted it the moment she felt it enter his body? A sob wrecked itself through her, and Aleksander smiled.
“You’ll be alone now. Such a shame. I would have enjoyed eternity with you, you know?” He said, closing his eyes.
The hand that had been touching Alina’s face wanted to slip from her grasp, but Alina refused to let it go, refused to be alone.
Her powers returned to her: she could feel them, but different, as if they were inverted. She closed his eyes, and couldn’t help but notice how the little remains of the Fold clung tightly to her fingers, like they were trying to not fade away in the light.
No, she thought, everything suddenly too fast as reality crashed around her. Please, no.
When she met with her friends once more, Alina did not tell them her suspicions: instead, she said she was not a Grisha anymore. They looked at her with something between disappointment and pity - Alina, after all, has lost her powers, her friend, and her enemy in a span of two hours. What was not to pity? From one of the most powerful Grisha alive to a normal person; this loss would haunt anyone else.
Nikolai convinced Alina to not live alone in the countryside. She agreed because it sounded better than solitude, Aleksander’s last words echoing unpleasantly in her ears. They let her fake her death, Genya tailored her hair an inky black, and all politely pretend she’s a cousin of Tamar and Tolya who doesn’t speak much Ravkan.
They gave her a nice room with a view to the grounds, the smell of flowers thick every time she opened her window, pleasant and lovely in warm days.
Coincidentally, it did not face the Keramzin. Alina laughed herself hoarse when she realized that.
Then, in the safety of her own room, she tried: reached for the power dwelling inside of her, pulled onto it like the lifeline it was. From Alina’s hands darkness poured itself, heavy and familiar.
“Very funny.” She says to the ghost of Aleksander.
He does not reply.
Alina learned to cope. She used his powers - they aren’t hers. Sometimes, Alina feels as if she’s just holding onto them, but that’s a ridiculous notion: Aleksander was gone forever - sparingly, mostly to sleep in a cocoon, unbothered by the outside world.
The pure dark is a comfort: it was almost as if she was dead, too.
Would admitting she had feelings about a dead man, one she had killed, be weird? Alina stared at a painting of the Darkling, embroiled in the darkness that she was only borrowing.
The painting’s eyes did not answer her doubts, nor they looked at her.
“How did you do this for so long?” Alina asked the empty air, and her voice echoed down the hall until it was barely more than a whisper. “How did you deal with knowing you’ll stay and others won’t?”
Something told Alina, however, that he didn’t: that Aleksander had that same emptiness dwelling inside him that she felt.
Sometimes Zoya looked at her, when they meet for meals. It was a rare occurrence: Zoya eats at the Keramzin, Alina eats alone in the kitchen, like a wounded animal. When they meet, it’s mostly because Nikolai has some boring state affair he doesn’t want to make so boring by having friends there, balls and meetings and what not. Alina liked those. People thought she couldn’t speak Ravkan and say things they would not, were they aware of the truth. She liked the tidbits of gossip, liked to have a reason to be present.
Zoya looks. And looks. And looks: Alina wants to hide behind her dark hair, but Genya had put it up in an elaborate hairdo that leaves her no room to hide.
They liked to parade Alina around, almost daring someone to speak up. Nikolai liked to give impossible explanations, and Alina liked to add in for fun. Sometimes she’s a long lost Lantsov cousin found with the turn of the war, other times he says she’s a Shu princess that has come to stay in court. Sometimes, a sliver of truth: he says she’s a cousin of Sankta Alina.
After a while, the nobles learn to stop asking questions.
Alina does not look back at her. Let Zoya stare, if she so wishes.
They were at some affair in the court, so far away from the maddening crowd it seemed like a dream, when Zoya accosted her on the second floor. Alina drank from her glass gently, watching people move. It was a fun exercise: they all look like ants in colorful garbs.
“How do you… Manage?” Asked Zoya, instead of any other greeting. Alina rose an eyebrow. “You lost your powers, and yet here you are, alive. How?”
“Breathing in and out, mostly.” Alina replied, and Zoya rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. I’m just here, and he isn’t.”
Zoya pauses.
“The boy…” She struggled to remember his name. Alina doesn’t fault her; sometimes she has the same sort of memory lapse, as if the memory of Mal’s name had sunk in with his blood in the Fold's soil. “Malyen?”
“Yes. That boy.” Alina lied, eyes back into the crowd. It’s easier to assume that her thoughts are of him.
When Aleksander comes back to life, sauntering into the room as if he never died, Alina looked at him, bored. Everyone was busy freezing up, but Alina simply yawned. He still had that same penchant for dramatics.
However - how thrilling it was to know she wouldn’t be alone anymore, that someone would stay with her through ages.
“So, what’s your plan?” She asked, breaking the ice-thin silence. Aleksander zeroed in her, and Alina drummed her fingers on the table. “I mean, surely you’re not alive just to haunt us. That’s my job.”
He cocked his head. A smirk played on his face, and he walked over to where she’s sitting. He’s ignoring everyone else, which is kind of funny, actually.
“Alina?” There’s a hopeful look in his eyes that Alina meets with bored eyes. “You’re alive?”
“No, dipshit.” She cracked a smile, and then he tried to attack her. it failed: instead of darkness as sharp as knives, from his hands flow light, and it’s so shocking Aleksander doesn’t move, simply staring at it for a long moment.
Alina laughed herself hoarse again.
At night, Alina dons the darkness she’s grown so familiar with and goes to the little cell they gave to Aleksander. Maybe he’ll be another addition to the oddities Nikolai befriended; she still remembers the Brekker boy from Ketterdam, teaching him to pick locks.
He’s there, staring at a light of his own making, sitting on the bed, looking disjointed, as if this was not part of his grand plan, whatever that might be. Alina creeped through shadows, staring at him like prey before she appeared before him.
“You know, you don’t see it right now, but it is hilarious.” She said, walking out of her hiding, and he looks at her, extinguishing his powers and letting the two in the dark. Alina didn’t care for his shame: nowadays, she could move around in the pitch black as if it was home. She sat on the bed, close enough to feel how warm he was. Alina did not want to feel cold flesh near her anymore. “Don’t you think?”
“No, not really.” He drawled. Then, a little light, just enough to let him know where she is, scared cat he has become. “Are you really powerless?”
Alina doesn’t answer. She simply puts out his light. He gasped.
“You -”
“I know.” Alina replied, and let his light shine once more. Her voice sounded bitter to her ears. “I don’t know how, but we exchanged powers.”
His hand found hers, and Alina intertwined their fingers.
“I missed you.” Alina said, and there was surprise sketched in his face, as if a drawing had changed overnight while she slept. She never thought she would see that expression on him. “I… Understand now what you meant.”
He looked at her.
“Do you?”
“It is kind of lonely.” Alina pressed their fingers closer, as if she wanted to meld the two together. “But I guess I have you now.”
“I’m not a thing to possess, Alina.” Aleksander replied, and then offered her a self-satisfied smirk. “Maybe my powers corrupted you.”
Alina smiled, softly, sadly.
“Who knows? Maybe we can find out that with time.”
Alina did not need his light to see how Aleksander’s eyes shone at that.
She wrote a letter to Nikolai, thanked him for taking care of her, said she’d deal with Aleksander and for him not to worry about the coffers being broken in.
Sneaking out of the palace with Aleksander in tow is deliciously fun when she can bend darkness to her will. His hand in hers feels warm, and somehow, that’s all that matters.
They’re at the seaside, a small room whose windows let them see the sea. The two ate bits and pieces of the food she’d got from the little bakery a way down from the street, watching as the sunset through the tiny window from their messy bed. Her hair, once more white, once more as if she was herself instead of being a shadow, fanned like a halo around Alina's head, laying in bed with him, bare skin against bare skin.
The sound of the sea drowned the world outside, as if they were alone in the world. It had been months since their escape, months since they’ve thought of Ravka and its fate, months since it had been more than just the two of them.
Alina had never seen so much of the world, and Aleksander seemed almost happy to show it to her. She couldn’t help but think that was something he had wanted to do, but no one ever stuck around for long.
“Are you satisfied?” Alina asked, abruptly, and Aleksander contemplated her.
“That’s a hard question to ask, Alina.” Aleksander started, slowly, and she reached across him to grab something, Aleksander automatically kissing her stretched hand for a brief moment, breath warm against her sweat-stricken skin. “Stay around for a few decades and I’ll answer you.”
She smiled, and he kissed her briefly. Alina had never felt happier.