Notes:
Here we are with another chapter!
This is the emotional one and it feels pretty personal, idk why ️. It took some theme to write, and I feel a bit proud of it. I expressed what I wanted to express and I hope you enjoy it!
-Flora
Aleksander finished his business late that night.
It was past midnight and he still had to go through some reports.
In the end, it was almost three in the morning when he went to her room. He was exhausted.
The door was unlocked, something that he knew she had started to do not so long ago.
He opened the door and entered the dark room leaving a little slot between the doors so there was enough light to see where to go.
Alina was asleep in her bed. She was on her left side with her hands sprawled in front of her.
He had previously prepared with his nightwear but with his kefta on top so he could walk through Little Palace and still look presentable.
He just took that off, the same for his boots and socks and got between the sheets behind her.
He then got near her and put his arms around her.
Slowly he closed the doors with a tentacle of his shadow.
"Good night, milaya," he whispered to her, distress in his voice.
Alina shifted in his arms and turned to face him and half asleep he heard her say: "...sander..."
Aleksander smile was pained, his eyes already closed.
He instantly relaxed, her breath was warm on his collarbone, one of his hands glided to her hip, his chin on top of her head.
"...sander..." she said again in her sleep.
"Alina," he found himself answering her call.
That was when sleep took him and he had the strange sensation that the reason for his fast falling asleep wasn't his exhausted body, but the woman that was whispering his name in her sleep.
When she woke up, it was still strangely dark. She usually woke up with light or because of nightmares.
She felt warmth under her and, not so surprised, discovered she was lying half on top of Aleksander that was deeply asleep.
She knew he was a light sleeper so she stared at him for a moment and tried not to move.
For the few times they slept together it never happened that Alina woke up before him, he would have already left or was waiting for her to wake up.
While Alina was watching him, she started to caress the hairs on his chest which leaked out of his nightgown. A black nightgown, obviously.
He had a relaxed expression on his incredibly handsome face. It was rare to see it.
His lips were slightly parted.
Was he dreaming? What was he dreaming?
Alina found herself incapable of thinking of him having dreams. Not desires but actual dreams, irrational dreams, those where you are one moment yourself and the moment after in a body that isn't yours. Those dreams that seem so simple when you have them and when you wake up you think to yourself that you are crazy.
Maybe...
Maybe she could see in his mind even when he was dreaming...
At that moment his mind was calm. She couldn't feel anything coming from him. But when she concentrated a little she was in his mind again.
She could see everything she wanted to see, she saw him walking towards her bed, saw herself in the bed, sleeping.
"Goodnight, Milaya."
"...sander..."
How embarrassing.
Seeing herself through his eyes was astonishing. She was radiant. It wasn't as seeing herself in a mirror, but as through a glass that made her shine, that made her beautiful and the best version of herself.
What that his vision of her? Saints, she could have fallen for herself if that was her real self.
She felt his sensation, one by one on herself: her hand tingled when he touched her cheek, a beautiful sensation spread through her scalp when she touched his hair, he had been out of breath when she looked at him from a higher position on the war table, the feeling of his fingers sinking in her tights was on her fingers, his chest rising for a deep breath when he saw her walking through Little Palace, in the gardens, going directly to her, talking to her, seeing her flushed cheeks even if he told her she wasn't red, seeing her smile towards him, feeling the conflict in his mind, his pride and his prejudice towards her. Because he had expected a child easy to bewitch but she was bewitching him and he was proud of the woman that she had become while facing the troubles that life had presented her.
He was proud of her every time he saw her. He was proud that one day he would have called her his and she would have called him hers.
He wanted to belong with someone but was afraid of the consequences.
Living for so long had made him hard, his mind had lost the playfulness of a normal person, joy was something he hadn't experienced for years.
Seeing herself as the centre of every past, present and future thought of his was dizzying.
She was the most important thing of his life at that moment, but he was an ambitious man above all because he had cherished power for so long, he couldn't have only one thing from life.
He wanted the throne, because he knew he could bring peace to Ravka one day. He wanted the throne for her too. No one is indifferent to power, he had thought. She would have learned to want it.
He also had a list of assumptions about her, about what she wanted, that scared Alina because it all could have been true.
But then she saw it. She had searched only for things related to her, moments while they were together. This was related to her, but they weren't together.
"Madraya."
"I killed an amplifier..."
"Malyen Oretsev."
"He was Alina's only family."
"To separate is one thing, to kill is another!"
She couldn't even start to process what she saw.
Mal was dead. Mal had been killed. Baghra had killed him. And she did it because of Aleksander. Because she didn't want to give him more power than he had already.
It was because of him that Mal was dead, but she couldn't blame him for that. To separate is one thing, to kill is another.
She saw every letter Mal sent her, every letter that went into Aleksander's fireplace and burned, after being read multiple times.
She saw their conversation, the blue irises, his disappearance.
Aleksander felt sorry for her. He didn't want her to hurt, he didn't want her to have any problems in life, he wanted to make her happy, and that shouldn't have happened. He wanted her to become strong, but not the way he had, not with loss upon loss.
He felt a void in his heart too. Something that he had never felt the need of. Mal could have been someone to him. Family, even if for a small amount of time.
She would have never encountered Mal anymore, would have never felt his hugs, his terrible jokes.
And with Mal's death, she realised a part of her was dead too. Her youth had been killed, her innocence, for what had remained living with the army. A part of her life had ended, what would have come next?
Though she had access to Aleksander's thoughts, his actions weren't already decided. Was he still going to use her and abuse her power for his purposes?
He surely wanted her, in different ways. He wanted her physically, that was certain, she could testify for that, but he wanted her in his life as well.
That was taken for granted in his mind.
She was taken for granted.
When he thought of the future, he saw them in a few decades, a century or more, side by side, unchanged, still young and strong.
He loved her in that future.
Was he hers at that time, asleep beside her in bed?
Surely not. He wasn't.
When would he change his mind? When would he start to love her?
When would she start to love him?
Was she already in love with him?
She couldn't say if she was or not.
She took a deep ragged breath.
When had things started to be so messed up?
She was with him in that bed, his arm around her and his hand on her lower back. She wasn't alone in that period of her life, she had him and her new friends, she had Genya; but she never felt more lonely in her life.
She was lonely because she had lost herself, and the only thing that was holding her together at that moment was Aleksander's arms.
He was the best and the worst thing that happened to her in her entire life, and she thought that he would remain so for her entire existence.
Alina dragged another erratic breath, her eyes had been spilling rivers of tears and she hadn't noticed, she started sniffing without thinking and soon she felt his arms move and tighten their hold around her.
"Alina," his voice was thick with sleep but held a note of alarm.
"Alina, what is it?"
She muffled her cries in his chest. "Just a bad dream," she was able to say.
He slowly manoeuvred her to lie on her side with him in front of her, he too on his side, her face still hidden in his chest.
He kissed the top of her head, "It's just a dream, Alina. You're safe. I'm here, no one is going to hurt you," his words were soft and gentle. He meant every word he said but still, her cries didn't stop.
"Let it out," he said in the end, "You will feel better."
She held him tightly, crying in his chest until she was exhausted, until she had shed every tear she had, and they were a lot because she had cried for herself, for Mal and for him too.
She had cried for their souls and their bodies, their minds and future and still she thought it wasn't enough because the despair she felt was too great to be only hers.
Notes:
How do you think the story is going? Did you start it and thought it would have taken this turn?
-Flora