Hey!
So this idea has been stewing in my mind since I finished Ruin and Rising - which I finished late November of last year, thereabouts: What if the Darkling had lived instead of Mal?
To be honest, I would've been okay with Mal, if he'd been written better. I think Leigh Bardugo's main focus was on the Darkling, Alina, and Nikolai, as well as other more influential characters. Mal's good characteristics are overshadowed by his bad characterization. He's put into the story as Morozova's third amplifier, and I get that he's necessary, but making him a character almost completely dependent on Alina for definition was a bad choice, if it was a choice at all.
Anyway, enough rambling! Point is: I. Do not. Like. Malyen Oretsev. That much.
So this picks up just after Alina kills the Darkling (that whole scene about 'no grave' and 'once more' - that crap still happens). The first two paragraphs were taken verbatim from the book!
All the characters and the wonderful world of the Grisha trilogy belong to Leigh Bardugo. I just like to play with them sometimes. Enjoy!
~Alex
The Soldat Sol were cheering, letting light blaze around them in glorious arcs as they burned the Fold away. Some of them had climbed up on the Darkling's glass skiffs. Others had formed a line, bringing the beams of light together, sending a cascade of sunlight speeding through the thinning scraps of darkness, unraveling the Fold in a rippling wave.
They were crying, laughing, joyous in their triumph, so loud that I almost didn't hear it—a soft rasp, fragile, impossible. I tried to keep it out, but hope came at me hard, a longing so acute I knew its end would break me.
Tamar swore, and her brother cursed in such foul language I almost covered my ears and howled at them to stop. But if I had, I wouldn't have heard that sound in the midst of it – that slow, thready sound. The sound of a breath that clung to life, not yet ready to leave it.
Hope sang in my heart as I knelt to Mal, but… he wasn't breathing. He was really and truly dead; skin cooling, limbs and muscles stiffening. Joy turned to disappointment turned to bone-crushing sorrow, and as our world – Mal's and mine – crashed and burned, I buried my face in Mal's chest and wept, blind to everything but my own grief.
For just one moment.
A familiar voice rent my self-erected shield of sadness. "Alina! They'll kill me!"
It was the Darkling.
I looked up, broken and angry, and there he crouched, the same as ever: pale and flawless except for the faint scar lines on his face. Something was missing, though, something that didn't include his physical features.
I realized it in the same moment he cried again for help – he had lost his authoritative voice. The Darkling had leeched away, and in his place, pleading for my mercy, knelt Aleksander. His voice was weak, as though one whisper could shatter the sound, and he was even paler than he should be. I could tell it was all he could do to keep himself conscious, let alone upright.
The twins stood above, their weapons shining in the new light. Tolya raised his, and I shouted, instinctively, "Stop!"
They looked at me as if I was mad. I probably was.
"Alina," the Darkling – Aleksander now – pleaded.
"What happened to you?" I demanded. "Can't you summon your shadows and defend yourself?"
He shook his head desperately. "I cannot. I tried, but –" He spread his hands. Nothing happened. No darkness leapt to his command. "I'm powerless, Alina, can't you see?"
"Can't you see Mal's dead?" I snapped, suddenly angry again. "You killed him, Darkling!" I didn't stop though he flinched at the name. "You killed him! You should've died instead!" Through my anger came wracking sobs, and soon I was weeping again.
"What can I say?" he rasped, softly. "I cannot say I don't feel sorry that the tracker – Oretsev," he corrected himself, as if it mattered that he knew Mal's name, "is dead. But I don't regret living." Oh, I hated him!
"Promise me one thing," I snarled, whirling to face him again. "Promise me that no matter how much longer you live, whether you have power or not, you'll prevent this" – I pointed at Mal's broken body – "ever happening again! Promise me that you'll put other people's lives first, no matter how much better your goal looks! Promise me!"
Aleksander looked at me, his bleak, exhausted gray eyes intensely focused on me alone. "…I promise," he whispered, so quietly I had to strain to hear it.
"I didn't hear you, Darkling! Swear it on your life!"
"I swear it on my life!" he cried. Then his eyes widened as he took in his surroundings – dead and dying lying everywhere, wounded being placed on stretchers, medics running through pools of blood, and the gray sands of what had once been the Fold he created. He froze.
"Where are the Grisha?" he asked in the same weak voice.
"How's she supposed to know?" Tamar growled. "She was fighting you!"
Aleksander curled back up on himself, his black kefta engulfing him. He suddenly looked small, and I almost laughed at the thought. The Darkling was tall, menacing, and ruthless. Aleksander looked lost, torn, and little. It was ridiculous to think they were the same person – except they were. Aleksander was the same man who had told me about the stag and power and ruin.
"What – what happened? Is this still Ravka?" His gray eyes widened, and they were as haunted as that moment when his mother had slipped out of his grasp. For he loved Ravka too, I realized. Though his crimes were many and bloody, they were because he loved his people.
He must have once been like Nikolai – hopeful, determined, and charismatic; one-minded in his pursuit of a haven for Grisha, of a united, peaceful Ravka. It made me wonder what turned him.
"It's the Fold, Darkling." My numb proclamation answered my unasked question: merzost.
Magic. Abomination.
It had killed Mal.
I was startled back to life with the Darkling's – Aleksander's – voice.
"Say my true name," he urged, not even loudly. "I control darkness no more; I am no Darkling, Alina. Call me by my true name." Tamar and Tolya exchanged shocked glances, and I, sensing their wariness and anger, suggested, "Go tend to the wounded." They obeyed, going off with a glare each at Aleksander.
"It's what used to be the Shadow Fold, Aleksander." I surveyed the ruins, which looked about as empty as I felt. No power, no energy, not even love. Mal – the only one I had ever loved, and the only one who loved me – was gone, gone forever.
"The Fold was a mistake," Aleksander murmured.
"You bet it was," I snapped. "Merzost has its costs."
"I never thought it would come to this." He raised his haunted gray eyes to my face. "Where I would want to destroy the country I loved. I never thought I would try to – oh, Alina!" His sudden cry pierced my heart as he bowed his head and sobbed. "Why my life was spared I have no idea. Death would have been kinder to me."
I looked at Mal. My first love and my only. His expression was peaceful, but – how'd I never notice? His eyes were fixed on the spot where the Darkling – Aleksander – had lain dying. I had a prickling suspicion about why it was Aleksander who lived when it was Mal I ordered the twins to save. I looked up at him as he discovered my knife in his chest, like a babe studying his hands or feet for the first time.
Aleksander took a trembling breath and pulled the knife out of his chest. The wound closed, and he gasped. "That is impossible!"
"I think I know why," I said, grimly.
Zoya came our way. "Alina! We're ready." She stopped when she saw Mal's dead body, and her eyes narrowed when they landed on Aleksander. He shook himself, then got to his feet, swaying but stubbornly upright.
The Squaller whirled on me. "What is he doing, alive?" she hissed.
I shrugged. "I honestly don't know. He just pulled my knife out of his chest." It wasn't a lie.
She unsheathed her own. "It's my job to finish him, then." She threw her dagger at him, but he whipped out of the way – an impossibly fast reaction. Then again, Aleksander had always been about the impossible. Even trembling from loss of blood, he was able to dodge Zoya.
His eyes flickered to me, and I ordered, in my most commanding Sun-Summoner voice, "Zoya, stop. He's not the same person."
"Says who? A Darkling is a Darkling!"
"It was only ever me," Aleksander said boldly. "I was every Darkling that has ever existed – the only Darkling that has ever existed."
"It's true," I chimed in.
Zoya threw her hands up. "Tamar and Tolya are coming back this way," she told me. "You had better decide what to do with that one" – she jerked her head at her former master – "before they come."
"It seems easy enough," Aleksander murmured. "Aleksander is such a common name." In one swift movement he shed his black kefta, took a cloak from a fallen Soldat Sol, and put the hood up. "Sankta Alina," he echoed, hollowly, and then laughed.
Somehow it was different; it wasn't the Darkling's triumphant, echoing laughter. It was the chuckle of a boy who found something funny. Zoya seemed conflicted between shocked, horrified, and furious.
Aleksander swayed again. His eyes widened as he stared at Mal's open eyes, which were still gazing at what might have been his death-place also. His lips formed a silent 'o' as the gray orbs took in the scene. Tears traced their way down his cheeks as he continued to stare at Mal. And somehow the Darkling crying was more surprising and angering than the Darkling laughing.
"What?" I demanded. He ignored me, only strode over to Mal and closed both his own eyes, and Mal's. "Thank you, Oretsev. I will not waste this life." I almost didn't hear.
"How? It's – it's true – then – is-isn't it?" I stuttered miserably.
Not turning to face me, he replied, "His blood was still on the knife, was it not?"
"Y-Yes."
"That was how he did it… his life was returning, and he – he gave me some of it. He did not know that the breath he shared with me was his last." He finally looked at me. "What is the connection?"
"What?"
"How were you able to nearly – actually – kill me with just a knife coated in a tracker's blood?"
A laugh bubbled from my lips unbidden. He didn't know! "Your mother had a sister once," I murmured. "An otkazat'sya sister. She killed her with the Cut, but their father – Morozova – brought her back to life – merzost. That was how she became the third Morozova amplifier. Mal is her descendant."
His features writhed in confusion. "So the tracker – Oretsev – is – my cousin?"
"I suppose that's it," I said, wryly, and it hit me again that this was a dead Mal we were talking about. The grief struck me hard in the face, and damn, it stung. And Aleksander! Couldn't I blame him for Mal's death? Was he truly the Darkling? Or was he a different man entirely?
"Alina?"
I cried even harder. A trembling hand touched my shoulder, and my hands parted to reveal Aleksander: confused, lost, unsure how to proceed in this new turn of events.
Then he dropped, his body thudding heavily against the ground.
I rushed over to him, fearing that Mal's enormous sacrifice hadn't been enough. But Aleksander was alive, if just barely. His eyes cracked open a slit, his breathing was brittle but his skin was warm.
I looked back at Mal, and I gave him a vow in place of one I'd never gotten to make. "I'll take care of him, Mal," I promised. "You must have really wanted him to live – or at least fix his stupid mistake." I laughed, an empty chuckle. "I'll make sure he doesn't waste this chance."