Note: Written for a prompt from ladykestrels: the Darkling teaches Alina to play golf/base/some sport. (The original request was for a modern day AU, but then this came out instead.)

For me, prompts always insist on coming along with some sort of context, even if the context is two steps to the left of cuckoo. So the context that presented itself for this one is a nebulous post-Ruin and Rising AU. As will be evident, matters did not turn out quite as they did in the book. The Darkling and Alina are on their way to Fjerda for Reasons. Those reasons may include something to do with helping out Fjerdan Grisha. Any further detail on that front. . .well, we'll see if further fic comes out of it;)

The shot tore wide, gashing the bark of a tree, but doing nothing whatsoever to the actual target save causing the doe to bolt. The forest was close around them and once free of the clearing in which she had stood, the beast was soon lost from sight. After a moment, Alina sighed and let the rifle sag downward. She gave it another moment before turning.

He was standing there as she knew he would be. Despite the fact he hadn't been nearby when she first sighted the doe, she had known. One black eyebrow was sharply hiked and that, too, she could have guessed.

Once, she might have snapped out a preemptive rejoinder to what she imagined he must be thinking. She would have, had it been Nikolai, smirking his cocky pirate-prince smirk at her for this. Or Mal (for a moment, she stopped breathing, pain knotting her chest) eying her with a cheeky grin, as he had when they were children and she took a tumble trying to match him on some dare. She felt such inclinations as only a hazy memory, one that might belong to another girl than she.

The Darkling wasn't smirking, nor even half-smiling. She simply felt there was some inkling of amusement there, somehow. His words certainly didn't argue against it.

"An exemplar of the First Army's marksmanship, I'm sure."

She did pull a bit of a face at that. "I was a cartographer. Most of the time they didn't even let me have a rifle."

"Hm."

That was that. He started back toward the little cabin - scarcely more than a shack, really - they had found, without a further word. Alina watched him go for an extended moment before following. Every day he moved a little better - not so halting, in need of less frequent rest. It had been a long journey in coming here, even before the snows set in. Watching him had reminded her of watching Baghra. He even sat closer to their fire in the evenings and morning, gazing at it with eyes so much older than the face into which they fit.

Now, it was more like watching. . .him, very nearly. She shivered, for too many reasons all at once.

They ate hare that evening, courtesy of snares he evidently set while she was tramping around after larger game. She had given him a hard, searching look while he crouched - one knee subtly braced against a tree trunk - to cut the creature free. But he refused to acknowledge the question she pinned between his shoulder blades and Alina gazed instead at the fur clutched in his hand, white as her own hair was white.

"Alina."

She blinked bleary eyes and stared up at the dark-haired figure nearby. He was positioned just a hair short of looming over her - it was as if he had measured it - and she came upright in a hurry, still trying to orient herself. Early light leaked in around the door. Not seeing any Fjerdan witchhunters, enraged Ravkans, or anything else that explained him deliberately waking her, she turned an accusing look to her left and willed her racing heart to calm.

"What?" It came out short.

"After you eat, come outside." As yesterday, as so very often, he moved away without further clarification. He stopped only to heft her rifle in his arms before stepping outside. Alina sat in her bedroll and debated laying back down. But curiosity finally got the better of her.

"I neither relish the thought of starving nor doing all of the hunting." This announcement greeted her before she was well out of the door. Alina paused, taken somewhat aback by the sight before her. The Darkling had the rifle raised, stance squared, and the barrel sighted somewhere into the distance. In peasant clothing as he was, he should have looked like a young hunter out and about in the forest. But what she thought of was a soldier, ready to loose a killing shot.

Straightening, he beckoned her over and extended the rifle. Alina approached, splitting a dubious look between man and weapon. "You're going to teach me to shoot?" she asked, somewhat incredulously. She could easily imagine him laying waste to an entire herd with the Cut. But downing a deer with a rifle like some otkazat'sya boy?

Her knuckles were white as she jerked the rifle toward herself (as she did not think of an otkazat'sya boy in snowy woods, standing before a stag).

Teach her he did, with more attention to the task than Alina had ever before received. Her training at Poliznaya on this point had not even been worthy of the word 'cursory', her poor physical condition at the time and destiny as a mapmaker inspiring absolutely no one to further exertion on her behalf. Whether he recognized that as cause or not for her lack of skill, there came several exasperated mutters from the Darkling over the course of the morning. But they weren't aimed at Alina herself, being instead more denigrations of those in charge of the First Army. She couldn't disagree; she remembered too many young men and women who were bound for service on the front lines, getting little more care in preparation than she herself.

She could only hope that back home, Nikolai would see to it that his army received better training than his predecessors cared to bestow.

Unlike his prior inclinations, the Darkling touched her very little during the instruction, doing so lightly and only when strictly necessary to correct her stance or grip. Through her thick winter clothing, it was nothing more than a vague pressure. Once, when his fingers glanced over hers, gloveless as they were, she fought back an urge to swallow.

After she managed to offend some shrubs with a bullet, Alina thought it a fine stopping point for the day, not to mention for regaining some distance between the two of them. Particularly because she couldn't make up her mind as to how much she wanted the latter to occur.

The Darkling had other ideas. Taking the rifle back for a moment, he proceeded to slide his support arm in through the loop of the carry sling. With a few further adjustments, he aimed the rifle, his left hand snugged beneath it by the strap. Removing it, he adjusted the length and then it was Alina's turn. She leveled another dubious look, but made the attempt. Narrowly avoiding cinching her whole arm up into an awkward position, at the end and to her pleasant surprise, it was much easier to bear the weight of the rifle that way while aiming.

Later on, they ventured deeper into the woods in hopes of locating game again. Alina magnanimously allowed that, as promising as her lesson had been, sustenance was a more likely prospect if not left up to her just yet. She took the rifle from the Darkling for the initial trek however, and summoned up a smile, bright and sharp, at the look he shot her way.

"Wouldn't want the mighty hunter to weary himself before he's bagged my supper," she announced and trudged off through the snow.

The buck would last them longer than a snare's take. Alina told herself she would bring the next one down, but it was a content enough thought, warm and pleasantly full as she was. On the other side of the fire, the Darkling had long since finished his share of the meal and was now reclined on his bedroll, his arms folded behind his head. She didn't believe he was really asleep - she remained convinced he tried to stay awake until she fell asleep, even as she tried the same in reverse. But it had been a wearying day even for her and by the time they had dragged the deer back on a crude travois assembled earlier against just such an occasion, it was clear enough he was exhausted. Of course, he would never come out and admit it. That would be too human. But there had been no commentary when she had taken over preparations for supper. And say what else she might about his proclivities, he had never been one to shirk his share of work.

Sitting here now, Alina amended her earlier thought. He might not have admitted weariness vocally, yet there was admission enough in the way he lay against wool and fur, muscles slack, and in the breath that brought his chest up and down so slowly.

She shifted, uncomfortable with the silence in a way she had not been in prior days. Scooting back and over so as not to have to peer past the flames, she cleared her throat and spoke.

"Aleksander." That never failed to catch his attention. Quartz eyes opened, tracking to her location. He waited.

"Where did you learn to. . .well, set snares, dress game. . . ." Her hand described a few loops in the air, standing in for the tasks she had seen him execute since they had set out. The wilderness had fit Mal like a perfectly-made glove and this had been in no way that. But the Darkling had shown himself knowledgeable and comfortable with things she found difficult to reconcile with velvet-cushioned coaches, silk kefta and richly appointed campaign tents. There had been the mad journey to Os Alta following her first venture onto the Fold. But still, the ability to sit a saddle for hard riding was not the same as knowing how to draw your fingers down the carcass of a kill, separating skin from flesh ahead of the knife. She had stared at the blood on his long white fingers and had to turn away.

"I didn't always live at the Little Palace, you know." He shifted and winced faintly when a rest-stiffened muscle protested. "There's many a time we would have starved if not for knowing how to live off of the land. And they're useful skills to preserve. One never knows when they might be needed." His eyes slid back to half-closed, though she still took it as a pointed comment on their current surroundings.

By 'we', he meant he and his mother, she realized. She remembered, suddenly and unwillingly, Baghra's tale back at the Spinning Wheel and berated herself. He had been young during the days when Grisha were hunted by many; of course they had had to learn to live in the wild, during the travels the old woman had spoken of. Alina coughed and fumbled after something else to say, trying not to remember. It was how she got through the days, that fight not to dwell on what had gone before. She had not forgotten, could never forget, but she could not be driven solely by her past at this point. Or his.

"I guess you've kept up with things," she finally said, feeling awkward. "I mean, they didn't have guns back. . .then." She trailed off, for she had never received a solid answer from either he or Baghra as to just how old they were.

His voice was dry as the flames, with a sleepy underscore. "No, 'back then', we ran around in loincloths and threw rocks with slings."

Alina made a small sound. It might have been a laugh.

Aleksander's mouth moved a little bit. It might have been a smile.