Title: Chance and Change

Rating: T

Pairing: The Darkling/Alina; Aleksander/Alina.

Notes: Canon-divergent. Heavily canon divergent. Takes place 300+ years after Ruin and Rising, not quite ignoring the epilogue but instead going on the idea that her powers came back to her after it all and the Darkling survived. Aaaand that they found each other again and old sparks flew. Yeeee.

Dedicated To: Leah.

"Can I tell you a secret?"

Alina forced her heavy eyelids open at the sound of his voice, barely biting back a yawn as she glanced up at him. His fingers were tangled in her hair, pale cream against silver snow, motionless and gentle as she laid curled up against his side.

"That depends," she said, sleep making her voice heavy. "Do I get to go back to sleep once you tell me?"

She let out a quiet laugh when he frowned at her in response, her head tilting as he tugged gently at her hair in a reprimanding manner. Maybe it was immature of her to make fun of him at this age, but she reasoned well enough to herself that even though she was 300-something years old, someone in their relationship had to keep them young.

Not that he looked any older. He was still as youthful and perfect as he'd been the first day she saw him amongst those tents, poised and staring coolly down at her from a chair he'd made seem like a king's.

"Look at you," he murmured, eyeing her with something that looked suspiciously like amusement in his gaze. "I'm beginning to think you're bored of me, Alina."

"Bored? Well, now that you mention it…"

"Careful."

"It's just funny to me," she said. "I used to know almost nothing about you, and now you're spilling secrets to me left and right."

"I have a lot of secrets to tell," he replied simply. He had begun to play with her hair again; it was hard not to drift off, but the thoughtful look on his face kept her grounded in the present. "I've lived more lives than the one you've experienced with me, Alina."

He didn't have to tell her that. It was something she was already painfully aware of. There were centuries spanning between them, endless years where he had lived as a man and done remarkable and terrible things. Years where he had suffered pain and scars that her hands had been unable to soothe or heal.

So many secrets, she thought. She wondered which he would tell her this time.

"Okay, I'll bite," she told him. "What's your secret?"

A small smile pulled at his lips, but he wasn't looking at her anymore. He was staring at the wall behind her, at the hand-painted constellations laid upon it that she had stayed up endless nights studying, all so that she could surprise him with a gift; just one more step towards creating a place of safety for them—a place that they could call home.

She'd never been an amazing artist. As a mapmaker, she'd been passable at best, but even with the errors and the occasional smudged fingerprints in the blue-black sky, he'd looked upon it as if he'd been handed something infinitely precious. The memory of it made her heart swell, made her soul ache. It wasn't the ceiling of his old room in the Little Palace, but it had been enough.

"To me, love has always been a fool's game," he began. "Something children clung to for security. Unnecessary."

"This is supposed to be a secret?" Alina couldn't help but to ask, brow arched and tone dry. "I figured that bit out a long time ago, Aleksander."

"That," The once-Darkling said, fingers disentangling from her hair and curving down the slope of her jaw. His expression had softened at the use of his name, as it always tended to. Almost forgotten, she thought. But not by her. "Is not the secret."

"Oh," she whispered, and her lips seemed to part subconsciously under the brush of his fingertips as he trailed them across her mouth.

"Oh," he repeated. He tilted his head a bit, observing her, and it came to her attention that she was blushing. Stop that, she scolded herself internally. She'd gotten past the flustered little girl stage a long time ago. But it seemed that time did little to erase the effect he had on her. By the way he was smiling, a small but indulgent quirk of the lips, she could tell he knew it, too.

"What's the secret, then?" she asked again, lips moving beneath the brushing sweep of his thumb. It was featherlight contact, but it still made her blood race.

"The secret is," he said conversationally, "That things change."

Her breathing stilled at his words, her eyes unblinking as she took them in. She weighed them, considered them for what they were—just that, words, a commonplace saying passed from the lips of peasants and farmers and nobles alike—and then for what they could be: implications, insinuations.

Hope was a thrill in her heart, unwanted but present regardless of the fact. Alina only remembered to breathe when his hand moved, retreating until it rested on her hip, the weight of it comforting and warm.

"Things?" She'd tried to say it normally, but her voice escaped her as a whisper. Humiliating. Hopeful. For within the many years they had spent together, love had not been a word between them. It had been a thrumming beneath her skin when they were close, a glass shard in her heart when he said or did something that disappointed her, a warmth in her veins when they kissed, but never, not once, had it passed from her lips or his.

The way his fingers clutched her just a bit tighter at the hip could have been her imagination. Or, her racing pulse seemed to tell her, he's hoping too.

"Things," he said. "And perhaps people, as well."

It wasn't an I love you, but it was an opportunity for them to get there. He's offering another piece of himself to me, Alina realized. Perhaps a piece of himself he hadn't realized had been left, rediscovered and dusted off from the ruins that centuries of loss and isolation had left of his heart.

It would take time, she knew, to cross such a rickety bridge. Passion and loneliness had kept them together for this long, but love—that was another ballgame, a sweet fruit she'd once sampled from a tracker's lips, a foreign taste to this would-of-been king's tongue.

But what was time to them? If he had anything to say about it, they'd have centuries together. Time is all we have, he'd told her more than once, but if she handled this right, maybe that could change. Maybe they could have each other, too.

Feeling like she could choke on the butterflies battering against her ribcage, floating up her chest, Alina laid her head back against his chest, listening for the telltale heartbeats that told her he was alive; that neither time nor her knife had taken him from her yet. One thump, two thumps, three…

"I'm glad," she whispered finally, and this time she was sure of it when he squeezed her that bit closer. And then he said, "Me too."

.

.

.

fin.

and then a month later he forgets about behaving and begins plotting again, probably. damn it, aleksander. YOU ONLY HAD TO DO ONE THING.

alarkling fluff is damn near impossible to write, i swear it to you. it's just not a fluffy, love-y ship. these two just do not want to be happy around each other. it's mostly aleksander's fault, though, lbr. y'all will probably notice some differences between posts. wording being changed, yadda, yadda. that's because i'm indecisive and picky about my own work and go back and edit things a lot. then i proceed to be too lazy to fix it everywhere. yeahh. ignore it. :)

lmao anyway hope you guys enjoyed it. peaceee.

- a.m.