Chapter Text
He was born when the new moon was at the highest point in the sky - when the stars were still being born and when the small sciences were still in their infancy. She was born 12 hours later - as the sun was fighting with their forgotten lover about its latest creation and was at its proudest point.
The sun and the moon had no interest in the consequences of their actions - they were trapped in the sky, why would they? But they did love to watch, bored as they were. They had no idea how the way that they bent their boredom would change their love, the Earth, and the small creations on it.
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In another life, another universe, they would have been lovers. They were even in this universe, the moon argued, but true lovers, argued back the Sun. They could’ve grown old together, had children, a life. The moon yawned, bored by such a trivial state, while the stars twinkled at the sheer romance of it all.
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It is not long before the Universe rights the lover’s wrongs - taking Alina’s powers, and ending the curse on the Darkling. The Sun and the Moon both are intended to learn the errors of their ways and that mortals, especially Earth’s mortals, are not simple playthings.
His last death is in the middle of the day. The moon screaming on the other side - the Sun disturbed by how empty it all felt - how even the clouds were not obscuring the view - as if they knew what needed to be seen and the price that had been paid.
They watch Alina die one final time - it is midnight on the night of the new moon - the stars are glimmering with tears, the sun igniting in anger at not being able to say goodbye. The moon watches in the dark - heart breaking for the girl who was never quite able to have the full life - the life without death and despair and heartbreak after heartbreak.
They beg the universe for another chance - these two mortals who were once cursed by the same beings who are now begging for a blessing. The universe is not one for forgiveness, not one for second chances. The same soul can only be returned so many times before it never comes all the way back - always longing to go back to its final resting place. But they sense the lack of balance - how the two mortals had been intended to understand grey had instead shifted the nuance out of the world.
So they relinquish.
Alina Starkov and Aleksander Morozova are both born for the last time on the Spring Equinox. It is twilight in the valley of the Avacha and Kamchatka, where Alina is born, and dawn in London hospital, where Aleksander is born. The sun and the moon both seem to shimmer on these days, proud of their mortals and anticipating the future of the pair.
What they do not realize, the universe sighs at the thought, is that simply losing power will not change who a person is, and that if like follows like, as the Darkling most enjoys saying, that tragedy will find them the same as it always has.
Alina leaves Ravka when she is small - her mother will tell her it was for better opportunities - that the land was dead as the hearts of the people, but Alina sees how the villagers look at her, half Shu, half Ravkan. Later, when they have made their way to America years later, she will visit a small bakery in Brighton Beach, craving a Marlenka, and will find a pamphlet on display - declaring Ravka for Ravkans. Though they are in America, and nowhere near Ravka, she understands that while Americans may hate immigrants who do not speak or believe the same that they do, they hate the ones who do not look like them even more - and she comprehends something solid about herself that day, and makes herself smaller in reaction. She does not buy a Marlenka.
When she is a child, her mother works in a clothing factory, first sewing basic pieces, then designing patterns. The education from local schools was lacking, and the hours at the factory were hard to accommodate, and so she spends most of her days on factory floors, drawing with fabric chalk when she is small, and doing small tasks when she is older. She is not as sickly as she was in her older lives, the universe having lifted the weight of power off her being, though with being as poor as they were having a lack of appetite may have benefited them.
They move into an apartment with 2 other Ravkan families, families who fit the traditional more than Alina and her mom, with husbands who are able to be fathers and children who have siblings. It is here that this life’s version of Mal Oretsev is met. But when they meet this time, Alina has her mother to protect and cling to, and Mal is already girl crazy, chasing after a girl in on the level above them. They laugh and joke at dinner, but it is almost like there is a barrier that both are too afraid to cross. The moon promises it didn’t do it, but the sun and stars are suspicious.
Her mother is lost many years after - the apartment that they share with so many other families is not a sanitary place, and they have no money for a hospital when she catches sick in her older age. However, Alina does not lose her as early as the first time, and the loss is hard, but logical. Alina is old enough to have her own job (though it is dull work, her mother’s work as seamstress allows her a position in a garment factory) and a small bed in a stacked apartment. Her sewing, specifically the speed at which she can work gains her notoriety, and soon a specialty position doing more intricate designs.
This specialty gains her further recognition, and soon she is moved out of the factory completely and into one of the new inventions, a department store for fittings. She is given a uniform to wear, and buys new shoes with her wages. It is here she meets Nikolai, though she meets him as Gerald, a suits specialist with a monocle and a fake mustache that continually falls off. He never references the mustache and so neither does she. She is much too comfortable, and now able to share an apartment with only one family, and even has her own room - even in this time, Alina is aware of the power of saving questions for later.
She works in the tailoring department for many years, keeping her head low, with Gerald who was not Gerald often interrupting her meetings to tell her the silliest requests of his customers. They form a close friendship only after they are both criticized heavily by a customer who insisted his suit was too small, and then too big, and ultimately, by the time that he had declared them both completely incompetent, they were determined then to be friends.
It is after this he reveals who he is, the son of the department store, and subsequently the multiple garment factories, owner. His father tasked him with attending university to gain experience, but Nikolai decided an intimate experience in working life would be a much better way to accomplish the same task. They continue to work until Nikolai learns of Alina’s lost passion for drawing and… sees her apartment. The sun insisted it didn’t hide behind the clouds that day in an attempt to make the already bleak apartment even more bleak, but the front is weak. Regardless of intervention and her own insistence that she is fine, soon there is an outbreak of flu in her building, and Alina is moved into a large brownstone for her own safety.
It is her first month in her own room, the first she has ever had, that she is visited for the first time by a ghost. Alina is not a religious person, but when the fire dims and the wind blows cold she somewhere, deep in her spirit, know that it is not simply because of winter. She buries her face in her pillow, silently screaming for her mother, or for Nikolai or for anyone. Instead, she feels a weight on the bed that does not shift a single sheet, as this weight’s frozen presence ices her bones, she feels a slow breeze along her arm and back. Her scream is dead in her throat, her body’s shake in fear not registering with her bony guest.
It speaks one phrase with a voice that sounds oddly like her mother, “This is not your realm.”
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Aleksander Morosova is born also to a singular parent, his mother still as hard and rough even in this version. A baroness of a failing estate from a political marriage, and in an era where large estates are becoming more burden than necessary, they often spend time in London, staying in their apartment, far away from their burdensome, broken down castle. She keeps a steady income through a variety of men, always on the edge of his conscience. She never tells him about them, and he quickly learns to never ask. This causes them to have a distance from most of London society, with him growing up being told both that he was too good for them, but also never quite fitting in no matter how he tried. The universe thought that if he was born into power then maybe that obsession would leave the man, but what does an immortal being know of the petty squabbles of the upper class? How being close to status is also to be closer to danger? And that a person is who they are, no matter their version of the story, and an apartment could never contain the Darkling.
As a young boy, he works fast to become top of his class, and soon attends university. He wants to study history. By this time, however, his longing to have a place in society is at the front of his mind, and as his mother shows him the state of his inheritance - the dying mines of clay, the dilapidated spirit of their miners, he realizes that dreams have no place in this world. He switches his specialty to mathematics. He doesn’t tell his peers that his place is made by scholarship, and not inheritance. Once, a fellow student finds out and plays a weak attempt at intimidation - the peer is soon found in a compromising position leading to his immediate and endless vacation from the school. The moon dims, hoping and failing to see a gentler Aleksander.
In 1883, the World Fair visits London. It is here that it has to be noted that the Darkling is very rarely surprised and especially, left in awe. In fact, the universe has only seen him in awe once before and then, it was inspired not by genuine joy, but rather joy at the light that Alina had shown validating every wrong step he had taken. This awe, however, was joy in its purest form. He thought nothing of cost or self preservation, but only of taking in whatever he could. He returned 3 years later in 1886 for the next one, and for the first time in this life and the previous, he felt fulfilled by wonder. He meets an inventor who promises to solve the lack of clay in the mines, and for once, he believes somebody at face value. He also notes that the sun seems to be almost painfully bright that day.
His mother calls him a foolish boy - promises that his endeavors will end in failure, but he withstands. The con, he soon learns, is that steel and specialized mechanisms are expensive and a failing inheritance holds no weight to banks or the hands of men.
It is after the first functioning model is made, and the bank refuses another loan, that Aleksander feels his hungry for success grow past his ability to feed it. Ivan, the inventor, stares blankly as the Baronet loses his composure. It is in this moment, that Baghra, offers a solution to both of their problems. As her age caught up with her, and she lost her loyalties from men who were now in search of younger, more attractive women, she finds not only the income insufficient, but… she is bored as well. She is a complicated woman, and while it is not that she longs for dramatics, she cannot be entertained by simple pleasures. Her son is an attractive man, and had chased after a variety of women throughout his years. She hadn’t approved any of them for marriage, but the point still stood. He could play the game as she had.
It is then they begin their scheme. They notice that the moon hides from the night sky for what seems like days.