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You were the best, but you were the worst
As sick as it sounds, I loved you first
I was a dick, it is what it is
A habit to kick, the age old curse
I tend to laugh whenever I'm sad
I stare at the crash, it actually works
Making amends
This shit never ends
?I'm wrong again
Wrong again!
...The way life goes
-
By the time, Alina had convinced the egregiously fuming Mal to remove the damn dagger from the privateer turned prince's throat and made the twins manhandle him out the tent, Alina was all but fuming herself. Fuming, physically and emotionally.
Arms akimbo, rotating her neck to where the prince had been busy preening over the wrinkled shirt from Mal's tussle, Alina found him already watching her. Lopsided smirk and all.
“Don't. Punch me again, I mean,” he said, arms up in mock surrender. “My jaw still hurts from your last swing, thanks for asking.”
“How. Dare. You.” Alina forced the words through gritted teeth. “How dare you ask me to marry you? Do you know how long it took to gain my respect, my dignity back? The dignity that you left shattered in your wake?” Her voice shook, pent up anger turning explosive. “What length I had gone to have Mal forgive me?”
“Mal? Forgive you for what, exactly?” Nikolai asked, bemused, “For failure to prioritize him and his sulking over your duties in the king's army?”
Something occurred to her just then. The sheer brazenness of his reply. Taking in his light tone, his amused eyes, the venom and the anger drained from Alina’s face, vaporizes.
Then she laughs, and kept on laughing. “Oh Saint, you don't even know. You actually don't know!” She laughs harder, hysteric. “In retrospect, I… never really knew you either, did I?”
Confused crease lines appeared between the prince's brows but he remained congenial. “Alina, you know me. Knew me, even then… when the notion of being known had become intolerable.”
“Oh, do I, now? Pray tell, which one had I known exactly? Which one was mine to know?” Alina laughed again, in disbelief this time. “Captain, prince, pirate, usurper; who even are you? Do you even know yourself?”
“Ah, for the last time, lovely. It's privateer,” he jested, trying not to teeter into seriousness but Alina's face closed off, hard. She’d have none of it. To be turned into a joke.
Yet, her eyes… even across the tent’s perimeter, he could see her eyes burn bright in anger till now; but now… the lovely brown of her irises rippled in agony.
That's how Nikolai knew it was time to drop the many masks stacked, sealed one on top of another on his face. It takes several seconds to find the version of Nikolai he'd allowed Alina to witness back when he was a boy. For he hadn’t been that boy for a long while…
Alina is balanced on her last thinning stand of patience when Nikolai finally drops the smirk and sets his lips in a thin line. And the boy she'd known returned.
Heaving a sigh of half relief, half despair, Alina brings her defensive arms up from her waist to wrap around herself. Her voice calmed, and she spoke. The words not laced in anger, but in whispered pain instead.
“Where have you been?” She breathed, pleaded. “I even went to Udova, to look for you. Only to find the Lantsov duke based there was of the royal line so I thought… I was convinced I'd misheard you or… or got it mixed up somehow…” Alina scoffed to herself in derision, shaking her head. “What a fool I've been. Must’ve had a huge laugh over this deception with Wojtek, huh?”
“I have taken no pleasure in deceiving you. None. Neither then, nor now. The Captain, the privateer… they're all just masks.” Nikolai explained, his voice pleading too.
“You did know me, Alina.” Nikolai emphasized once more, “The real me, down on the mud, at my lowest. And I thought..” Averting his eyes, Nikolai swallowed a lump, trying to say the right things, and looked back.
“I thought If I allow her to know me, if I… keep leaning on her; eventually I will ask something of her, a soldier in my command, I have no right to ask.”
At the words, Alina's so far expectant shoulders dropped. Like he'd said all the wrong thing. The worst thing he could've said.
“How could you not know?” Looking entirely dejected, Alina whispered, and turned away, pinching the bridge of her nose, “...how can you not have the slightest clue.”
Hearing the despair evident in her voice, seeing as she is turned towards the tent's exit, Nikolai's heart gripped in fear that she might actually leave.
“I was too damaged, beyond repair, beyond that even,” Nikolai rounded the desk with urgency, rushing to explain himself. “and I would've extended the damage to you too.”
Alina stilled.
“Damage?” Her reply was barely a whisper, sounding torn, almost. Then she turned back to face him, brown eyes glassy in unshed tears but fierce.
“You wanna talk about damage? Okay, lets talk,”
There you are he thought, like a fool.
Nikolai wasn’t afforded the chance to celebrate this small victory before his world tilted at her next onslaught.
“Do you know they still call me your whore?”
“What-”
“Our friends at the 18th had a blast. Every barracks, every unit I had been part of for the last two years? That had been my identity. The Shu half breed who'd thrown herself at the famous war hero, grieving Captain; just to climb the ranks.”
Speechless as he was, Nikolai had to say something but Alina wasn't done.
“I had been a Junior Cartographer for three years. Three. Most make it to Assistant rank within one and a half.”
She chuckled, humorless. “But you know, that wasn't even the best part. The most hilarious rumor to come out of it? That.. as the rumor goes… that I apparently, I had let the bear fuck me too.”
It was too much to process at once, even for Nikolai's honed intellect. He sputtered. “Why had I never heard of this- why…”
“How could you have, songbird?” The venom in her was back in full force. “All your righteous disdain over your noble blood, your tauting of songbirds in golden cages… but your cage is as vast as the True Sea. You felt suffocated? Felt damage? Well, good for you! For you had the choice to leave. While I was stuck here, living through your consequences!”
Heaving, Alina felt herself tipping towards the edge, so she held herself tight. Looked up, trying to distract herself by the Officers tent’s high canopy, trying to make the tears stay where they are,
“I thought… you heard… but just didn’t care. But, the truth is much worse. You didn’t even care to even ask after me. You weren’t even on this damn continent…” She swallowed the lump in her throat, it proved to be difficult to hide said lump, face tilted up as hers was.
“Was I so low life, so insignificant you didn’t ever care to even ask after me…. You just…used me.“
When she’d collected herself enough to look at him straight again, Nikolai’s chest was heaving too. From the accusations or hurt or anger, she couldn’t know. But it was enough for her to spur on.
“Used me as a shoulder to cry on when you felt guilty about killing your childhood whipping boy!”
Hurt flashed across his face, unguarded. Good, she wanted him to hurt. It wasn’t fair she was the only one who was visibly hurting.
“Then you… tossed me away… and for what? In retrospect, how is that any better than a whore?”
Nikolai exhaled, eyes pained. “Alina…”
“And now, now you want me to marry you? After treating me like a whore when I was at my most vulnerable, now that I can shoot light, NOW you want me to be your WIFE? How dare you?!”
The boy prince took in every one of her accusations, every pained, and angry and justified barbs thrown his way. Took them straight to his heart.
Then the boy in him retreated and the prince returned.
“Yes, I want you to marry me. Now.”
He had a distinct feeling Alina might've struck him, if she was within range. Well, she still could, now that she had the Cut..
He raised a hand that is meant to be placating, “It's not that I didn’t… care for you. I just I..” hearing himself stuttering, Nikolai resolved his mask. “I love Ravka.”
Confused anger passed over Alina's face at that and Nikolai hastened.
“That will remain true, always. Even if we marry, now. Even if we had…allowed ourselves to mean more to one another back then, Ravka would've always, always been my first love.”
The silence stretched, ached. It ached more than he’d been prepared for.
“Then we have nothing to say to each other.” Whispered the Sun Summoner, face devoid of… anything.
He was losing her.
Desperate, Nikolai lurched ahead. Willed some of the mask to loosen.
“Ever since Dominik, other than Dominik, you are the last and only person I had bared my soul to.” He said in one breath.
“You are the only one alive in this world who'd known me. Truly seen me at my lowest, and still cared.”
Alina looked to the side, he couldn’t know if she was even hearing him. Nikolai risked another step.
“I had hoped… you could find it in me, to parts of me that made you care and to care for me again. To care for my cause,”
At that, something in Alina snapped.
“All I saw… was a suicidal person about to jump over the ledge. That's not what care is… that's public service.”
“Your public service saved my life. And if you'd allow it, united, we can save Ravka-”
“Listen to the words you say, ‘united’, ‘alliances’, ‘match’, that's all I am to you now isn’t it?” Anger returned in her blazing eyes.
“Then what of happiness? Of comfort? And peace? What of-” She stops herself short of uttering something deep and potentially humiliating. Alina clamped her mouth shut, shutting away.
He loves Ravka. Not her. That much he's made clear. He loves Ravka.
But Nikolai wouldn’t let go.
“Back then, our entire… arrangement would've been based on grief…of.. of unhealthy attachments. Dead and unmoving. Now, we have a shared goal. A goal that's… alive and full of potential. If we understand this, we can be happy,” Nikolai stumbled to make her see, to make her look at him. Look.
We can be very happy together.
“Back then… I couldn’t even think straight enough to offer you an explanation or a proper goodbye. But now… Let me make amends, Let me take care of you, please.“
Alina remained despondent during his monologue and for another whole minute. Nikolai is sure he has lost her for good when she whispers her resolve. Slaps him in the face with it.
“Go back to pretending I didn’t exist. I don't need you to take care of me.”
I have Mal. Although she doesn’t say the last part out loud, its there. Clear as day.
“In fact,” Resolve returned to her face, but brown eyes empty. “I don't care for you. I didn’t back then either. Like I said, public service.”
Refusing to let her slip away entirely, desperately, Nikolai stepped up to her space. Alina turned her blank face away from him but didn't move or shove her way out.
“Yes, you did.” He whispered, and watched in wonder as the crinkle between her brows twitched.
“I can still feel it… in my bones. Whenever in those horrible moments, I am reminded of that broken husk of a boy I had become after Halmhend…” He risked a gentle touch over her upper left arm, when she didn’t slap him across the face, he went on.
“During the coldest week of that grieving boy's life, you were the warmth to keep that boy alive. Sunshine…”
Before he could register it himself, he'd leaned in and touched his chapped, undeserving lips to her temple. Like how her warmth had lingered on him so long ago.
Shaken, Alina closed her eyes, allowing herself to feel the contact for a second. Then a second longer. The second after that, shoved him off her and moved several steps to the side.
Ten or twenty or maybe hundred seconds of oppressive silence later.
“Why are you with Mal?” She heard Nikolai whisper, barely veiled disappointment in his tone. "What are you doing with him?”
But Alina heard the silent accusations behind the words loud and clear. After everything you'd told me about Mal's treatment of you.
“Then what should I have done?” Alina said coolly, narrowing her eyes back at him. “Toss aside the only person who'd been there for me throughout? When he isn’t useful to me anymore? Who would do such a thing? Ah, wait that's you.”
Sucking in a deep breath, Nikolai sucked in the jealousy and desperation and his grief along with it. He wills the masks to return. Glued them shut.
“Yes, that is me. I am no longer the boy who can afford the luxury to dwell in mourning and I can’t…” he doesn’t finish the sentence, like he'd said too much and starts anew.
“What's at stake now is bigger than you and me, Alina. You have to choose. It's either me, the conning version of me you see now or… the conniving Darkling you've always known.”
Alina reared back as if struck, her empty brown eyes filling with something like fear.
“You… you have changed,”
Nikolai knew she didn’t mean it as a compliment.
“But Alina, you have changed too.”
He gestured at her, all of her. What did he see that had changed so much? Her shiny hair, no longer wiry and lifeless? Luminous skin, no longer dull and pale? Nothing like the wispy girl from back then? Unknowingly sickened by repressed power?
Then why do I feel like that orphan cartographer, still?
“I haven’t changed, the world, my power forced me to.”
Pity crossed Nikolai's face. Not unkind or cruel but pity nonetheless. “Oh, lovely. It's the same difference.”
“You are no longer that helpless girl; are no longer that Junior Cartographer anymore. I… sympathize with that girl, that she was never allowed the choice to simply…run away. But Alina, you don't have a choice now either.”
Nikolai's face hardens, and voice turns icy in such a manner, she could've mistaken him for the Darkling just then.
“You are the Sun Saint, and saints don't get the luxury to run from their fate. There won’t be another repetition of your… excursion in Novyi Zem or anywhere, for that matter. Not until the Fold is gone. I won’t allow it.”
Alina felt a deep chill run down her spine. Another man. Another man of power threatening to control her, her power. After lulling her into safety.
As she contemplated this… golden cage she's trapped herself in, Alina stumbled back, stood with her back to him, hugging herself.
The cold was creeping in. Which was absurd because it’s high summer outside the tent. But she felt cold, not in a tent but out in the starless sky, her breaths coming out in fogs, frost creeping on the tips of her fingers. Into her heart.
An inconspicuous greatcoat is draped over her shoulder from behind.
“I'll see you at the waterfall.” She felt Nikolai whisper against her hair, his breath warm and before she could dwell in it, he left.
-
The way life goes
Joyriding down our road
Lay on the horn
To prove that it haunts me
I love you, I'm sorry
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