"Close your eyes, Alina," the Darkling said as he carried me through the dimly lit tunnels of the underground laboratory. "You've seen enough."
I've seen enough? What exactly constituted enough? At what point should a person turn their eyes away from the atrocities of the world, especially if they were the ones responsible?
Despite myself, I forced my eyes closed.
I found only carnage.
A room full of blood.
I opened my eyes.
I saw only death.
Bodies littered the hallways.
A battle had been fought and, arguably, lost, depending on who you sided with. I didn't know who I sided with— I had been ready to betray the very Grisha that killed for me. It was apparent they had fought their way through a Shu Han labyrinth, filled with devilish doctors who only wanted to slice us open and ask us why we bleed.
They mobilized at the Darkling's orders, straight into the unknown. All for me.
It wasn't what I deserved, that much I knew. Too many mistakes. I had gone too far, past the threshold of appropriate human error and onto a path of destruction. I felt like I was watching the world burn all around me.
Ravka called me a deserter. Grisha either feared or hated me or both. An entire kingdom was in shambles because of my mistakes.
"Take me back," I whispered. "Put me back in my cell." I pushed against the Darkling's chest with my bloodied fists, shifting my weight away from him.
The Darkling only gripped me tighter. He held my mangled wrists with his pale hands, ignoring my demands.
"Alina, stop," he whispered. "Please."
There was something about his voice. I stopped struggling. Instead, I went limp against him and tried to think about nothing at all.
"Let me rot," I said, half-delirious.
I could sense the hesitancy in the Darkling's breathing. He wanted to console me in some way but he didn't know how. This was all new territory for him, though I imagined it had been planned in meticulous detail long before.
I was at my weakest—ripe for the taking. Or rather, manipulating. Had I ever been so vulnerable to him before that moment? Maybe. But this felt like a new low.
Nervous laughter bubbled up in my throat. I suppressed it.
We were on an incline now, nearly out of the dank maze. I felt the exit before I saw it. The air was icy and prickled my skin. There was a slight breeze, the smell of pine and the familiar scent of blood. The scents assaulted my nostrils and made my head swim.
But that probably had to do with mangled mess that was my body. I tried not to look at myself too closely.
The exit was an explosion of charred wall and fallen rock with dead Shu guards littering the ground. It seemed there were no survivors.
"Where are your Grisha?" I asked, realizing I hadn't seen any as we ascended through the maze. I had only seen the dead bodies of the Shu.
The Darkling hesitated as we stepped out of the hole in the wall and into an abandoned building. "I came alone."
All those dead bodies that we passed… they were everywhere.
"You did that? Alone?" My voice sounded foreign as it left my throat. If I didn't know any better, I almost sounded impressed.
Saints. Maybe I should have died in that cell after all.
The Darkling's grey eyes focused on me only for a moment before he waved his free arm and cloaked us in his shadows. He started on a steady path out of the building that reeked of death and into the cover of the forest.
There was a dreamlike quality to the whole thing. I was quickly losing blood, becoming more and more disoriented but my mind refused to succumb to exhaustion. Everything that happened to me grew more unbelievable as I thought about it, preventing me from sleep.
Never in my life would I have imagined myself at the hands of the Shu, pleading for the Darkling's help. Yet that is exactly what happened. And he delivered.
I was rocking in his arms, staining his black kefta with my blood. Some even smeared onto his sun in eclipse pin. A symbol that we both somehow shared now.
This had never been my plan. It had never been what I wanted for my life. Not this.
Not like this.
"Ravka wants me dead," I heard myself say. "They're calling me a deserter. White heretic. Isn't that funny?"
I thought of the briefest glimpse of worry that passed over Nikolai's face when he saw me off at the Little Palace only weeks before. Had it been weeks? I wasn't sure.
Now I understood what had concerned him about my departure.
Nikolai wasn't afraid that I wouldn't ever return to Ravka-only that I'd be something else entirely when I did.
We were back in the caves.
Corporalki saw to my wounds, several of them trying desperately to piece the Sun Summoner back together. They tried to slow my heart and put me under but I refused. After trying to use the Cut on one of them, they submitted and tended to me while I was conscious.
I refused to sleep. It was too painful—if that could even begin to describe what I was feeling. I wasn't even sure I was registering emotions the same way as before. Before Dr. Yaza strung me up from the ceiling and destroyed the last bit of goodness inside of me.
I sat in a large, elaborately decorated room, considerably nicer than the one the Darkling had me in before. There was a large bed, two tables with chairs, a dresser, stocked bookcase, standing wardrobe, and a wall full of ornate maps. I had the assumption that this had been my chosen room all along but the Darkling wanted me to bend to his will first. Though it didn't seem to matter now.
I wasn't much use in my current state.
Jurda stained my hands orange as I packed it into my mouth, fighting off sleep the best that I could. The orange flower was spread all over my silken bedding. Hours of me picking the plant apart and using every last bit of it to stave off the demon of exhaustion.
I refused to sleep. Two days had passed since my rescue from the Shu. I didn't sleep. But I also didn't talk. Or eat. I chewed on jurda and drank water and stared at the maps on the wall.
I imagined myself sketching out those very structures, over and over again.
Ad infinitum.
By the third day, the Darkling finally made his appearance. It seemed he had been avoiding me after we returned to the caves. He said nothing as I was placed in the care of the Healers. He had simply disappeared from view and I hadn't seen him since.
"You're not sleeping," he said from the corner of the room.
I didn't hear him enter though I should've been used to it by now. He was a being of shadows after all. "Same old tricks."
"I wanted you to rest before we spoke," the Darkling said, ignoring my comment. "I saw no reason in exhausting you further."
"Yet here you are."
"Here I am."
"You're lucky, you know," I said, my watery eyes lingering on the last burning lantern in the room.
"Am I?"
"You had your mother through the worst of it. Hundreds of years with Baghra by your side," I said. "I know she didn't hold your hand through it all but at least she was there."
I expected the Darkling to leave the room at the mention of his mother, but he stayed, standing just slightly out of view. I could make out the sway of his black kefta but that was all. I hoped he had it washed.
"I'm afraid to sleep," I said, filling the silence. I didn't care about my pride anymore. I was an open book. No longer anything to hide. "I can't face my dreams."
He was silent. Still. Thinking of what would be best to say. What would yield the most from me. "I had them too, Alina," he said softly. "The terror of facing your worst memories and fears. Nightmares."
You're the Darkling, I thought. For many, you are the nightmare.
Out of my periphery, he stepped closer. He was hovering by the mahogany bedpost. I didn't pull my eyes from the lantern.
"No, she didn't hold my hand," he continued. "She did something better." He moved around the bedpost now, standing in my view of the lantern. A dark mass eclipsing the only light in the room. "She taught me that no fear, no threat, was greater than what sat in the hearts of men."
A phrase came back to me then, something that I read in a book ages ago. Something that still stuck with me after all this time.
What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.
The Darkling leaned before me, forcing my eyes to focus on him. "You have nothing to fear within yourself, Alina. The worst has been done to you and you have survived."
"I want to do more than survive."
"And you will," he said. "But first, you must regain your strength. That can only be done if you sleep."
"Tell me," I said, peering into the Darkling's eyes. "Did your mother's words really work? Did they stop the nightmares?"
"No, not always." He paused, his eyes going distant. "She would sit by me when I slept. Stroking my hair. Retelling a story. Humming one of the few songs she knew."
The Darkling's words struck a chord within me, like they often seemed to do. He was tugging at something that I had long buried. A longing for something so pure of intent.
"Such a distant life," I murmured, examining his face. He looked so young in that instant—boyish even.
"It had been enough then." He focused his eyes back on me, their coldness returning.
We were both silent for a long moment.
"Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?" The words spilled out of my mouth. I hadn't planned to actually say them. It had just been a thought. A brief thought that turned into an absurd spoken request.
I expected he would laugh or at least scowl at me, but he did neither.
"If that's what you wish," was all he said.
"You don't have to read to me or anything like that," I said quickly, pushing myself onto my elbows. I could feel heat flushing my cheeks. "Just—just stay for a little while."
The barest hint of a smile tugged at the Darkling's lips. He crossed the room to the lantern, dimming it slightly, then grabbed a slim book from the bookshelf. I couldn't see its title though I was sure it was something he'd read a million times over.
He sat in one of the wooden chairs closest to my bed and opened up the book's dusty pages. I watched him as he read, his gaze intent as they scanned the line of every page.
Not bothering to glance up, the Darkling said, "You're sure you don't want me to read this to you?"
I shook my head, feeling intensely aware of the weight of my eyelids.
A short time after, I succumbed to my exhaustion and drifted into a deep sleep. My dreams were bottomless, infinite. But they were without terror.
Though I had the strange sensation that someone was stroking my hair as I slept. Maybe it was a new form of nightmare, Baghra back from the dead, taunting me for my admission to fear. Making me feel things long forgotten.
Or maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a nightmare at all.
Author's Note: Three things. 1) I'm going to finish this fic. I have to. I owe it not only to myself, but to everyone who has taken the time to read this haphazard mess of a story. 2) Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has left reviews. Seriously. I would never have gotten this far into the fic without you guys. You are essential. 3) I've finally linked my tumblr to my profile so feel free to follow/yell at me on there to update/share your alarkling feelings with me. Thank you again.