Chapter Text
For one blessed instant of blissful ignorance, Alina could almost make herself believe it had all been a dream. An insane and nonsensical dream starting with her being found as the sun summoner by the first person to ever make her feel like she was worth something, to eventually stabbing that person in the heart to save the world from his insanity.
Unfortunately for Alina, there was such a strong stench of cabbage permeating her nostrils that there was no way she was dreaming.
She woke up in a normal bed, nothing like the plush and comfortable mattresses and duvets of the Little Palace, but not a military cot either. The ceiling above her had exposed and irregular wood beams, and the house smelled warm and filled with cooking.
Alina gingerly stumbled out of bed, checking herself all over as if she might have woken up missing a limb or two. No, the only thing she was afraid of waking up without was— She brought her hands together and took in a deep breath. Searching as deep within as she could, she sought out her light, the familiar warmth of the sun. Immense relief flooded her as soon as she grazed it with the tip of her consciousness, slowly pulling it to the surface, coaxing it to her fingers and— abruptly stopping before anything could come out as the door was opened.
"Oh, you are up! How are you feeling?" asked a woman she had absolutely never met in her life.
A steaming bowl of something was in her hands and Alina's stomach growled at the mere sight and smell of it. Shchi without a doubt, the cabbage smell overpowering the rest.
"Well... Fine, all things considered?" She was alive and whole and that was already a lot. "I... Where am I? Where are the others?"
"What others? We found you alone passed out in the field just behind our house, poor girl. You looked all roughed up. Here, have some soup, it will help,"
Alone? Passed out in a field? Alina took the offered bowl more out of automatism, allowing it to warm her hands as she tried to process the situation. What could have possibly happened? The last thing she remembered was killing the Darkling. Had he managed to get away? But why would she be alone? Had he killed everyone else? And then left her in the middle of nowhere? Perhaps he believed her powers to be completely lost and she thus was of no use to him anymore? But what about the Fold?
"What is your name, miss?"
She startled as the woman spoke to her again and levelled her a bewildered gaze. Should she say the truth? She had no idea where she was, who that was, what the situation was currently in Ravka. She didn't like lying but...
"Olga," she blurted out.
"Oh, lovely. Well, you should eat, Olga,"
"I..." she was starving but also... She could clearly tell by her surroundings and the woman’s clothes that she must have been a peasant. “I can’t, I don’t want to take food off you,” she regretfully declined.
“Off me? Oh, Olga, I can’t remember the last time it cost me to share a bowl of soup with a stranger,” the woman laughed, waving her off. “It would shame me a lot more if you refused it. Besides, you are like a little blessing, looking so much like our Queen,”
Alina had started bringing the soup to her lips at the woman’s insistence and nearly choked on it.
“Pardon?”
Her, looking like the eerily-too-flawless Queen or Ravka, with her blond hair and her milky skin and— What the fuck.
“You do, don’t you? The hair—” the woman gestured at the wall behind Alina.
She turned around, soon spotting the small framed portrait she was being shown.
A halo of light around her head crowned in white hair, her shu features clearly recognizable, and sunrays pouring out of her fingertips, Alina’s dark eyes fell right into her own painted ones.
Of all the things Aleksander had expected the afterlife to be, upside down hadn’t been one of them.
"Sir?" a child's voice called out worriedly and it took him a few seconds to realise he was being addressed.
Also the afterlife wasn't upside down: he was. Sprawled in a bush with both legs over his head, more precisely.
With a grunt at the effort, he flipped himself over and stumbled to his feet, squinting at the aggressive sun immediately shining upon his face. That did not look like the Fold. He was standing in the middle of the Little Palace's gardens.
His heart twinged painfully.
Figures that this was how the afterlife would appear to him.
"Sir?"
He finally noticed the boy staring at him with a mix of worry and awe, a little blond head all dressed up in a light cotton blue kefta with red embroidery.
Also figures that the first person he'd meet in the afterlife would be a grisha child, he thought morosely.
"Hello," he greeted. The sun felt so real on his skin, the caress of a faint breeze on his face. He brought a hand to his chest and mindlessly rubbed at the spot where Alina had buried her blade in him. "Are you alone here?"
The boy tilted his head in confusion. Aleksander too felt confused, not recognizing this boy at all. He wasn’t from the cohort that was already at the Little Palace before everything unfolded. His kefta design was slightly odd as well, lighter than they usually were, even the summer ones.
"Of course not, there's always lots of people in the Little Palace, but everyone else is in class and, uhm..." he gave a vague shrug and his cheeks turned crimson as he realised he had just admitted to ditching class.
Aleksander had just died and did not quite feel in the mood for scolding a dead child for ditching afterlife class or whatever that was, perhaps the whole thing was a product of his imagination. He took a tentative step instead, finding the ground quite solid beneath his feet.
"Are you—" the boy piped up again. "Are you the Darkling?"
"Perhaps," he mumbled, looking down at himself. He was still wearing the same battered black kefta as when he died, complete with a rip where he had been stabbed. He barely noticed the boy's excited gasp, but he started as he suddenly took his hand, eyes shining in excitement.
"The Queen always said you would come back!" he spoke quickly, excitedly, and Aleksander could only blink in confusion. "You need to see her, I will take you to her!"
"The Queen?" he ripped his wrist out of the boy's hold with a frown of distaste.
He would not deal with Tatiana Lantsov, or any Lantsov really, now that he was dead, thank you very much. Though the last time he heard she wasn't dead, but perhaps the prince's infernal flying machine had crashed with the royal couple on it.
Now that would serve all of them right.
His head throbbed and he wasn't about to make it worse by confronting the shrill Queen, or ex-Queen, whichever, of Ravka. The gardens were oddly unfamiliar, although he had recognized them at first glance, he was now noticing differences here and there, new floral arrangements, different paths— Wasn't the summoners’ pavilion bigger? He took a couple steps back so he could take a look at the Little Palace itself. His eclipse banners were gone, replaced by radiant sun symbols and golden flags.
The Lantsov double-eagle was nowhere to be found and his lips curled up slightly.
The evidence of the siege he had himself led could be seen on the glass dome, a large portion of it wielded back together with melted gold, the new glass so much clearer and delicate looking than the older one.
“Am I really dead?” he questioned, more to himself than to the boy who was still openly staring at him.
“The history books prefer to say ‘fallen’ ,” the boy answered anyway. “Oh! Moya tsaritsa!” Aleksander’s head whipped around as the boy ran away.
Never in his centuries in Os Alta had a young grisha been so eager to see the—
All his thoughts came to a brutal halt as his eyes followed the young inferni. Golden silk, intricately embroidered, barely brushed the paved path of the garden, allowing him the smallest glimpse at elegant boots underneath. He couldn’t help but be mesmerised by the black threads weaved here and there in the beautiful gown, or the way it opened to accommodate for the antlers collar around a slender neck.
The potted flower Alina had been carrying crashed to the ground as her dark eyes met his.
Zoya coughed out the mouthful of dust and dirt she had eaten upon crashing to the ground. She was quickly back on her feet, wind pooling in her hands, ready to fight all the—
—tumbleweeds?
She deflated frighteningly quickly. The Fold was gone. Alina was gone. All the volcras and Nikolai as one of them were gone. Their enemies were gone. The Darkling was gone. The sun was high up in the sky and falling upon her like a divine punishment, and she soon found herself boiling in her kefta.
She shoved it off her shoulders, letting it fall down in a heap for the time being and squinted at her surroundings. Nothing. Miles upon miles of nothing. Not a tree, not a house, not a person. Sweat beaded on her forehead. When had it ever been so hot in Ravka? Even on the border with Shu Han it never got that bad.
“What the fuck have you done, Starkov?” she grumbled, feeling the need to blame someone.
Where to? She couldn’t tell the direction with just a blazing sun trying to fry her and not a single tree. Perhaps at night she would be able to tell with the stars’ positions. But what good would it do her if she didn’t even know where to go?
She steeled herself as anxiety started rising in her throat. She was a soldier. She would march on.
And so she marched on.
Her throat was parched and she had gathered her kefta again, holding it above her head in a weak attempt at gaining some shade without suffering the warmth of the garment made to withstand Ravkan winters. The air was distorted, wobbling ethereally with the heat. Every footstep cost her and the burn of the sand seeped even through her thick soles.
She had tried fanning herself by summoning more wind, but it only threw hot air in her own face and displaced sand. There were no deserts in Ravka. None of that kind, anyway. Where was she?
Her vision was so hazy that she did not even see the soldiers and the tent at first. But she certainly heard them.
“What could you possibly take from us?!” a man wailed.
Ravkan.
“There will be no need for violence if you comply, hands over— Eh! Who are you?!”
Zoya’s eyes narrowed, now taking in the scene. A shoddy white tent, almost invisible against the scorching sand, with a young man still half hidden inside it while an older man was standing in front, trying to negotiate with… Soldiers? She took in their weapons, then their unusual uniforms. Pale beige rather than olive, they looked almost like Fjerdan soldiers, but their accent was unmistakably Ravkan.
“Who are you ?” she snapped back.
“Dmitri…” one of the soldiers whispered, eyes going wide. “It’s her, the rebel commander Nabri!”
Zoya’s heart dropped. Impossible. How could these men she had never seen in her life know that name?
“What… Did you call me?” she asked through gritted teeth, the wind slowly swirling around her, dragging the sand with it as the men scrambled to point their rifles at her.
“By orders of the Tsaritsa, you are under—”
Zoya did not allow him to finish that sentence. She hurled the gale at them, a tornado of sand rising from the ground and imprisoning the soldiers into merciless cocoons of pain. Their wails did not reach her through the howling of the wind, and she only relented once she was sure they would not be able to shoot her.
As the sand fell back into place, so did their lifeless bodies.
“Commander Nabri…” the older man who had been pleading with the soldiers murmured in awe and fear.
She whirled around and grabbed his collar, ignoring the way he flinched.
“ You are going to answer my questions,” she hissed.
It was hardly Nikolai’s first time waking up bound to a chair. Such was life when you were a handsome rogue, after all. Though he would usually be in the lair of his enemies, not in front of one of his very own crewmates.
“He does look like him,” Tamar blurted out, clearly perplexed.
“Well, I usually look like me. Unless when I don’t, I guess. Admittedly, it happens fairly often,” Between his disguise as Sturmhond and his latest bout as a volcra —and he had no idea how he turned back but that was an immense relief—, he often wore other faces than his own.
Somewhere behind him, a door slammed shut.
“It can’t be him,” a furious yet familiar, or perhaps even more familiar when it was furious, voice hissed.
A second later, Zoya stood in front of him.
With short hair.
His eyebrows shot up as he took in the beautiful dark curls, somehow arranged perfectly while still looking like they had a mind of their own.
“Nice hair,” he commented, and was rewarded with a violent slap across the face.
He let out a gasp of pain.
“That was a compliment!”
“Who are you?!” she asked, grabbing his face in her hand, fingers digging painfully into the meat of his cheeks.
Perhaps it wasn’t Zoya. Perhaps she had a twin? A sister? A cousin?
“Nik’lai Lant’ov, ‘econ’ ‘rince o’ Rav’a,” he struggled to say.
She released him and he worked his jaw with a wince, feeling the pressure of her hand linger against his muscles.
“Aren’t you Zoya? I know we haven’t spent that much time in each other’s delightful company but—” he stopped at the press of Tamar’s axe against his throat, not even daring to gulp.
“Stop,” she ordered him firmly. “Who are you?”
“Tamar— You know who I am!” frustration and fear were slowly starting to rise in him. He had just spent Saints-knew-how-long as a monster not even remembering who he was and now—
What if he still looked like a nichevo’ya?
“Do I— Am I still like a monster?” he fearfully ran his tongue over his teeth, found them remarkably flat and ordered, like his own good old human teeth. “It’s me, Tamar, Nikolai, your captain?”
“You do look like him,” she replied, nonplussed, certainly not moving her axe. “A bit babyfaced,”
That made him pause.
“Babyfaced? How old do I look?”
“Not a day above twenty-five for sure,” she turned back to Zoya who still seemed about to start shredding him with her bare hands. “Maybe it’s an Opjer cousin? Or Grimjer?”
Nikolai’s jaw nearly dropped.
“Opj— How— I never—”
“Who cares who it is, let’s just get rid of him,”
This was insane. Perhaps he was dreaming. Perhaps he was still stuck inside his own body and the monster was still in charge. Living through a strange fantasy made up by his distraught mind.
He was Nikolai Lantsov. They couldn’t kill him for not being himself, because he was himself, and he knew that. He shoved down the bubbling anxiety, locked away his shock at them so casually throwing around his most guarded secret, the name he had only been given by his mother after the Os Alta siege.
“I am Nikolai Lantsov,” he said firmly, getting their attention back. “And I don’t look a day above twenty-five because I’m twenty-two, for the Saints’ sake,”
Babyfaced .
“You are an impostor,” Zoya barked at him.
"Then just ask me something only I would know," Nikolai shrugged, languidly stretching out his long legs in front of him with all the confidence of a man who knew who he was. Which at that point was the only thing he knew.
"Fine," Zoya snapped back. "What happened in Tovda?"
He blinked. "Tovda?" what happened in Tovda? Where in the world was Tovda? He narrowed his eyes, tried to read the closed-off face Zoya wore, guess the answer in the tight set of her jaw. "A-ha. It's a trick question, I've never been in a place called Tovda, even less with you,"
The fury that flashed in her blue irises was no trick, and he realised that a beat too late.
"It's not him. She must have sent him. Kill him,"
“Wait!” he braced himself, but although the axe did not leave its spot against the tender meat of his throat, Tamar was still looking at him suspiciously.
“But it’s strange, Zoya. Why send us this… Baby Nikolai? She knows what he looked like the last time we saw him. This is… Just odd,”
“Look, I have a theory!” he hurriedly said, even as the theory really was three half-formed thoughts burgeoning in his mind. “I don’t look like Nikolai Lantsov… But you don’t look like Zoya Nazyalensky!” his hands twitched, eager to point and move, but sadly tied behind the chair’s back. “Your hair is short, for starters. And, erh, this scar near your ear… I don’t remember that? And even you Tamar, you’ve got that… Your eyebrow wasn’t split. I would know, I’m your captain. And..” His eyes quickly went over her, looking for anything that would support his theory. He froze abruptly as he found the stump at the end of her left arm “Your— Your hand…?” really he didn’t actually have a theory, none that wouldn’t make them immediately deem him insane, but he had to cling onto whatever he could.
They did not look convinced. But also they looked marginally less likely to execute him.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Tamar asked him, ignoring his unspoken question.
“The Spinning Wheel,” he answered immediately, and both their eyebrows shot up. “The Darkling found us and then one of his nichevo’ya grabbed me and dropped me onto the floor. After that he—” his throat tightened at the memory that still felt so fresh. “He infected me with one of his creatures. After that I don’t have any memories, it’s more…”
“...impressions,” Zoya finished grimly for him.
“Yes! Yes, like flying, or attacking animals, and I couldn’t— I couldn’t even—”
“—read,” he nodded frantically at her answer and she covered her face with her hands, letting out a pained noise as she turned away.
He looked back at Tamar, glancing down at her hand holding her axe.
“...Tamar?”
“And now is the first time you wake up after that?”
“Yes. Not the best way to wake up, by the way,”
“We found you splayed out in the middle of the desert. Honestly the vultures were starting to eye you,”
Desert? Vultures?
“Free him,” Zoya’s voice cut them off and she turned around. “But if I find out this is all some kind of trick…”