To Want in the Dark of the Night
When she woke in the dark room, it took Alina a moment to remind herself of where she was. The dark green wallpaper and heavy drapery was starkly different from the neat, bright white of her suite she stayed in - no, lived in - the last time that she was in the Little Palace. Every time that she opened her eyes and frowned at the darkness around her she had to remind herself: She was living in Aleksander's rooms.
Not that it was truly by choice, unfortunately. Symbolically it would strengthen her assumed position among the Grisha. Returning to Os Alta with Nikolai had come with the need to give both herself and him as much leverage as possible. What made a bigger impact than coming in with an entourage of Ravkans supporting their Sun Saint and declaring herself the spiritual successor to decades and centuries of the Shadow Summoner leading them all?
Alina would have preferred to return to the Vezda suite, political impact be damned, but even those rooms left a sour taste in Alina's mouth. After all, that had been the place where she had been cajoled and deceived by Genya. Just because it had been at Aleksander's behest didn't keep the memory from smarting.
Still, Aleksander's rooms were haunted with their own ghosts. There was too much of him here. Of course there was. The curtains, the decor, Saints even the height of the hooks in the wardrobe all were Aleksander's. So when Alina stirred from her fitful sleep she went through her same perilous mental journey of looking for danger, realizing she wasn't on the road or in that miserable hostel in Novyi Zem, starting again when she recognized the decor around her, and finally settling back into her pillows with a tired sigh.
Tonight was no different. Alina had left an oil lamp lit, its tiny flame giving enough light to dispel the worst of the room's shadows. It hadn't been intentional - she had been working her way through some of Nikolai's designs for their defenses, trying to make heads or tails of either his or David's horrible scrawl in the margins correcting and re-correcting sections, and ending up falling asleep in the middle of it all - but the light was a comfort nonetheless.
Alina sighed and pushed the forgotten papers into a rough pile and deposited them on the nightstand next to her. They could be properly organized tomorrow. Not that it would help her understand them any better, necessarily, but she could hope.
Then she was left to try once again to fall back asleep. There wasn't a sliver of dawn peeking through the heavy night sky so she at least had some time left to try and rest. It was a struggle, though. Apparently she was destined to only fall asleep when she wasn't trying to.
With her next turn, Alina nearly shouted. The pillow next to her was now occupied, and a painfully familiar pair of dark brown eyes blinked at her. Alina shoved a palm against Aleksander's chest as though that would be enough to send away the ghost.
Of course, it wasn't actually a ghost like the tricks of the light that usually plagued Alina in the corner of her eye or in the deep of the night. This was actually Aleksander.
"I wasn't even thinking about you," Alina hissed. She kept her voice low. Not that anyone would be listening, really, since her guards were stationed two doors away, past the War Room, but she was still holding out hope of falling asleep shortly. Getting into a shouting match with a Grisha only she could see would not help that goal.
"Very well," Aleksander agreed. "You weren't thinking about me at all."
That was more irritating than if he had pointed out the lie. Alina's brow furrowed and she again shoved at him. His hand came up to capture hers, holding her palm against his chest. "That's hardly polite," he said.
Even across the miles that separated them, Alina could still faintly feel the effect of his amplification. Her heart lurched and her pulse raced. Despite the sun being hours from rising, Alina drew in a ring of light motes with a few short breaths. Aleksander's eyes broke from hers to stare at them. Always he was drawn to the light, hungry.
Alina tugged her hand out from his and the light quickly faded again. Aleksander's expression took longer to change.
"What do you want, Aleksander?" Alina whispered. She turned on her pillow to stare at the canopy above them. Sometimes when the tether brought them together they would clash and fight. Other times Alina would coldly ignore him for hours until the connection ended. Tonight, she just wanted to get whatever he was here for done and over with.
"Nothing that I can have," he replied, his voice achingly soft.
Alina pressed her eyes shut. She didn't have to look at him even if they were brought together. "That makes two of us," she said. "All I want is to sleep, but I can't seem to get a moment of quiet."
"Heavy is the head that wears the crown."
"I don't see a crown on my head. Just some braids and too many hairpins," Alina snapped. Another nuisance that came from falling asleep without finishing her nighttime routine. And she was getting sick of Aleksander's vague allusions and instances that one day she - that they - would sit on a throne.
She felt the mattress shift as he moved beside her. Then she heard him offer, "Come here." Alina twisted her head to look back at him. Aleksander had moved to sit against the headboard, one hand tapping on his lap.
"Absolutely not," Alina retorted. She scoffed and returned to looking pointedly at the canopy. She might have crossed her arms for good measure but that would have meant taking them out from under the heavy duvet that she had retreated underneath.
Then she had to shift her head again because she had slammed it against the pillow right on one of the pins. Each new spot she tried only managed to find more pins and more discomfort.
"Alina…"
She closed her eyes and counted backwards from ten. She got to about four before she felt Aleksander's fingers trail against the side of her face. Then they moved to the section of hair closest to him. Then she lost count. The smart thing would be to start over again, but then again, Alina had never quite succeeded at doing the smart thing the first time.
It was easier to tilt her head and let Aleksander's clever fingers tug out the hairpin right there that had been pressing on the bone behind her ear. "Better?" he asked, as though Alina hadn't just let out a contented sigh.
She opened one eye to glare at him. He didn't have to be so smug about it.
"You're not supposed to be doing this. We're not supposed to be doing this," she insisted. Her eye eased shut again.
"Yet here we are," Aleksander replied. To make matters worse, his hand was still oh so lightly in her hair, one fingernail gently running along her scalp. Alina couldn't help but want that feeling everywhere.
She couldn't afford to think that way. Couldn't afford to want Aleksander like this.
"What keeps drawing us together?" Alina found herself asking. She tipped her head when Aleksander's fingers got close to another set of hairpins. Within moments they were removed and another section of hair was worked free.
"Do you mean the tether?" He answered her with more questions. "Or do you mean the fact that it's the dead of the night and all that I can wonder about is where you are and whether you are safe?"
Alina shivered and it wasn't due to any cold. Her hands gripped the duvet around her neck. She conceded defeat and rolled to rest her head on Aleksander's thigh. "I meant the first, I suppose," she clarified. The second seemed a much more straightforward answer in spite of everything.
Aleksander hummed as he thought. Alina could feel it where her cheek pressed against him. "Or maybe there is only one answer to both," he mused.
"Like calls to like, after all." He may have voiced it, but Alina had also been thinking it.
He had pulled out all of the pins or at least that's what it felt like to Alina at this point. Aleksander was now gently running his fingers through her tresses, smoothing out the snarls and braided twists into nothingness. It wasn't fair. This wasn't fair.
He wasn't actually here. Alina wanted to latch onto that as her single buoy of sanity in these dark chambers she had stolen. There should be comfort in that, that this exchange between them was something not unlike a shared dream. Inconsequential and formless.
Despair rose up in Alina's chest. She pressed her eyes more tightly shut and waited for the wave to subside. Her arms moved out from the covers to wrap around whatever part of his leg that was closest.
If it was a comfort that this was all meaningless, that Aleksander was as good as the ghost that she thought he was, then why did she want so badly for this to never stop? Why was the lie so hard to hold on to tonight?
"Shhh," Aleksander murmured. "Alina." She felt a hand on the side of her face. He swiped away the tears that had spilled over.
"It's easier if I hate you," Alina growled in an attempt to squelch the pain in her chest and replace it with the burning fury that kept her going through the day.
"Yes."
"I can't care about you. You can't care about me," she continued emphatically. All the while she refused to let go of him and he refused to stop running a knuckle delicately down the smooth curve of her cheek and jaw.
"I know."
"We don't get to have this."
His response this time came with a heavy sigh. "I know."
Still though, Alina leaned into his touch. Her mind barely registered the faint thrum of the amplifier underneath the delicacy of Aleksander all around her. This was when she was supposed to tell him to leave, to stop thinking about her, to stop whatever plots and machinations that were only going to continue to tear Ravka apart by the seams.
Her arm loosened only enough to allow her to trace invisible patterns on his calf, a lazy mirror to the ones he sketched. "Don't leave tonight," Alina murmured, a quiet demand. As if either of them would let him.
If he was her ghost, maybe she was his, too. And they would haunt one another in an eternal chase until there was nothing left but the quiet, the dark, and the tiny haze of light from whatever stars dared to shine down on them.
A/N: The working title/concept for this fic was "I'm going to stroke your hair but it doesn't mean anything because I still hate you" and I feel like that says more than what I finally decided on titling this thing. What can I say? I can't wait for the rest of canon to keep stepping all over my heart with these two so I have to do some heart-rending of my own T_T
Also don't me about writing yet another fic where Darkles takes down Alina's hair for her. I have everything under emcomplete/em control.
