Trigger Warnings: canon-typical gaslighting and manipulation; references to canon dubcon body modification; body horror; (non-explicit) discussion of the body modification; brief moment of self-harm (Alina tests the sharpness of a blade on herself and is satisfied when it breaks the skin). There's also a bit in here that makes an allusion to the Darkling's actions that make them sound like that other thing (yes this was deliberate).
As a whole this chapter deals with some pretty heavy subject matter from the point of view of a victim being forced into close proximity with the person responsible for much of the trauma mentioned here and still feeling under threat and afraid of them, so please tread carefully.
When Alina wakes up she is resolved.
Her dream slowly fades as she fully wakes up and she expects her memory of it to slip away, but to her surprise she still remembers it all vividly. All the little hints and clues and pieces that her unconscious mind had put together, the plan that her subconscious had spent the night coming up with, it all resolves itself at the forefront of her mind, crystal-clear.
And just like that, Alina knows what she has to do.
She knows already that Aleksander plans to take part in a crossing of the Fold today, using her power for some kind of demonstration. She's not going to let him carry through his plan, whatever it is. She has a way to stop him now. She has a better idea of how it all works, how her powers and the amplifier and the Making all connect and intertwine and affect each other. And she can't help but think that the General doesn't know; or if he does, then he doesn't truly understand it. Otherwise he would not have been nearly so stupid as to collar her with the very antlers that came from the Stag who had come to her willingly.
So Alina sits, and she plots, and she waits for an opportunity. She's always been good at patience once she has a plan she can put into action.
Various people have been and gone by the time the Darkling graces Alina with his presence. She's been given a black dress to wear as a base layer under a corecloth dress that she hasn't yet seen. Her hair and make-up have been done by an Alkemi and a Corporalnik that she hadn't recognised.
If it weren't for the jutting bone antlers collaring her neck, Alina would almost think that she looked like a princess - or at least like the ideal of a princess that she'd had fun drawing and dreaming of when she'd been a little girl.
The General enters the tent silently, but at this point Alina would know him by the crawling feeling on her skin that she feels in his presence alone, even if she hadn't caught sight of his dark kefta in her peripheral.
She looks away from where she's been examining the collar in the mirror, trying to adjust to the sight of it, to glare balefully at him. If he's going to come in here as some kind of victory lap or to make her feel any kind of sympathy for him, she's going to make him work for every single second of grudging silence and make him regret every word he gets out of her mouth.
They stare at each other in silence for a long, drawn-out moment, and Alina idly wonders how he's going to break it. What he's going to choose as the first words he says to her after his awful triumph in that tent after he'd channelled her power through his will for the first time.
"You are special," he says, as his opening volley, and Alina feels sick at the thought that he thinks compliments are the way to win her over after everything that's happened. She feels sick at the idea that she could gloss over all the lies and manipulations and the spying on her so easily, that he thinks she won't care, or worse, that she's too stupid to put the pieces together, "You do know that?"
Alina resists the urge to look away and instead just glares at him harder, like she can make him combust through sheer force of will.
He simply carries on like he can't feel her boring into him with her baleful stare, "And you're about to prove it to the world. There will be foreign diplomats on this crossing of the Fold."
None of this information is new to her, but she looks away from him anyway. He's very clearly angling for her cooperation. She steels herself, and despite knowing the futility, makes her demand anyway, "If you want me to play along with your demonstration, you will release Mal." She turns to meet his eyes and projects her willingness to hark on about this point until he screams, in the vague hope that maybe, just maybe, she can save her oldest and dearest friend before she damns them both with her actions.
For the first time since he entered the tent, Kirigan looks away from her, "Please." He says, the faintest hint of a growl in his voice, and Alina thinks that the her he knew in the Little Palace would have trembled a little. But that girl died in the snow in the North and was never more than a mask Alina hid behind anyway. Alina is done hiding; she's done being meek and obedient and kind. The General can think what he wants and say what he pleases, Alina has a plan that she will carry through with until the last breath leaves her body and damn the consequences. He's hurt her and broken her trust for the last time, and she will not let him in again, even if some part of her still yearns for his touch, craves nothing more than to be able to believe his lies. "I just want to talk to you." He lies.
It's never just talking with him: it's tricks and manipulations and twisting someone up so much that they don't know up from down or right from wrong or anything other than what he wants from them and that they want to give it to him.
Alina wants to snarl at him, like the cornered animal that she is. Wants to bare the sharp teeth that she's been hiding under politeness and kindness since the day she lit up the Fold. But she doesn't. Instead, she shakes her head and keeps her teeth hidden behind her lips, keeps her claws sheathed, for now.
"I've had enough of your lies." She says to him, barely refraining from spitting the words. Instead, she glances back at herself in the mirror. At the antlers he used to collar her with. She knows that this is all a game to him. A game that he's been winning for years, always ten steps ahead of everyone else. But she can play too, and she learned sleight of hand at the same place she learned how to hide tears and ruthlessness covering vulnerability. So she'll play along with him for now. She'll duck his suspicion. Because if there's one thing that she knows men like him never see coming, it's a wild card. And he might be winning the chess game he set up, with all his pawns in a row, but Alina switched the board out for a pack of cards when he wasn't looking. And now, she's playing the highest stakes game of poker of her life, and she's not about to lose.
"And what lies are those?" Kirigan asks, slowly walking towards her, and despite herself, she cannot stop the angry disbelief she glares at him with.
Is he serious? Is he really going to act like he's ever been even slightly truthful with her when his intentions all along were so clearly telegraphed in that tent the moment the antlers bound them together? Is this how he gets people to trust him so easily and do as he wishes? By convincing them that their own memories are wrong, by painting his own interpretation over actual events, and explaining away any grievances they have?
Alina wasn't going to do this, she really wasn't, but she cannot just leave that sentence to lie like he's not trying to deny his own actions and complicity, "About the Black Heretic," she begins, as he sits down on a chair far too close to her for comfort, and ignores the part of her that screams to put distance between them, "You spun all this guilt around your burden, sins of your father," she shakes her head again, "There was no father. You created the Fold. You killed my friends. My parents," She doesn't know how many of these accusations she means or how many are hollow and her just going through the motions, because none of that is the worst part of what he's done, not even close, as far as she's concerned. The Fold is terrible and a blight and absolutely one of the worst things she can imagine coming from the kind of power that the Darkling has, and the strength she fears she shares, but personally, the thing that hurts her the most is the idea that he'll use her and what she can do to further his own agenda and turn her into just another nightmare, just another Heretic like him. The worst part is that she's certain that he'd do it all again, that he wouldn't learn, that given the chance to take a different option, any other option, he'd still go ahead and make the Fold anyway. And that? That makes him a monster.
Alina turns to meet his gaze as he looks down, with the faintest illusion of guilt on his face and wonders how genuine it actually is. Because she's not certain that he actually feels it. She waits a beat before she lets the most damning words of all slip out, wondering what it will take to crack that mask he is wearing, if it is a mask at all and not just evidence that he doesn't give a damn about anyone else outside of his own goals, "And now your perversion of power extends to me." She looks at the collar in the mirror again, pointedly this time, wondering how he'll respond to the veiled accusation she's made of him. Whether he'll admit to anything at all or deflect blame onto others or just outright twist things without ever answering what she's actually saying. It seems to be his style.
For the first time since she ran from him, she seems to have scored a hit. Something hit a nerve, because he looks down and avoids her gaze and she isn't so sure that he's faking it.
"Baghra," he says, with a faint disgust, as she looks back at him and meets his gaze, "How could you so easily believe the twisted words of that angry old woman?"
She doesn't. Believe Baghra that is. Not just like that. But the General must truly think that she's some kind of idiot. Because Mal had told her every single word that he had exchanged with them and everything that he had overheard after escaping Baghra's ambush, and even if he hadn't overheard their truly telling conversation about how they both regarded her – well she's not stupid. She's perfectly capable of putting her own pieces together thank you very much. And she has absolutely no intention of remaining a pawn stuck between the two of them in their twisted family game of power.
But if that's how he wants to play it, then fine. She can play the blame game too. Let's see how long he can manage to ignore the elephant in the room – or, well, the dead Stag if one were to be pedantic about it.
"And who should I believe?" Alina demands of him, surging out of her seat and lashing out at him in a way that he no doubt expects and has already prepared an answer for, "You've been lying to me since the day I met you." She barely manages to curb the bite to an accusing tone and forcibly restrains herself from saying more – she has to bide her time, no matter how difficult it is to keep her temper this far under wraps and stop herself from physically lashing out.
"Telling you half a story is not the same as lying." He immediately responds sharply and curtly, almost before she's finished speaking. And there it is: his prepared response.
Alina isn't sure whether she wants to laugh or scream. Because doesn't that just sum up everything that she's learnt about this man.
Technically, technically, he's right. A half-truth isn't a lie. And part of Alina wants to accept his words. The part of her that is still desperate for love and craves his touch, his attention, the way he made her feel special and different and important. The part that wants to believe him because it's easier than fighting. But that part is becoming smaller by the minute with every new sentence that crawls over her skin and leaves her shaking with rage because a much bigger part of her is screaming and snarling. At heart, Alina is still that little ghost of an orphan haunting the Duke's lands. And every orphan learns fast that a half-truth might not be a lie, but that doesn't make it any better than one. Because the part of the truth that is hidden away and buried under the part spoken aloud, is always, inevitably, the more important part.
You cannot trust the person that tells you pretty half-truths and omits the parts that you might not like.
Alina forgot one of the most important things that Ana Kuya ever taught her. And now she's paying the price.
But she doesn't say that. She swallows the first three responses that leap to her tongue and suppresses a half-hysterical laugh. Because who does he think he's trying to fool? If she wasn't so desperate to avoid his suspicion of her being anything but compliant in order to pull this off then she might say something about not being the naïve little girl that he seems to think that she is, nor the desperate and in denial cartographer that he'd hustled away to the Little Palace as soon as he'd discovered her.
But she needs to keep him in the dark. So, she shakes her head slightly, as much to clear her own thoughts as in response to his bald-faced audacity and pivots to a different accusation that he no doubt also has an answer for.
"And what about conspiring with the Apparat to poison the King and usurp the throne?" she asks scornfully, "Did you?" she doesn't particularly like the Apparat any more than she likes the King and has been rather indifferent as to who runs the country for years now. They're all just as bad as each other in their ivory towers so far from the front lines and completely indifferent to the people that starve and live in poverty just outside their gates, or worse – walking among them and just not caring because they see their lives as less important. The King. The Apparat. The Darkling. What's the difference anymore when they're all equally terrible in far too similar ways? When they place importance on a few and elevate them and are happy to leave the rest of the country to rot unless it gives them an advantage.
Alina doesn't really care, but the way the General has been pushing the narrative of a lazy and frivolous King and conniving and threatening Apparat makes her think that the girl he sees when he looks at her would. And she's got his number now, so she plays along. "Or did you want to tell half-truths about that too?" Alina keeps her tone cutting and waits to see what he'll do.
He looks down and Alina's not sure if he's faking shame or guilt as he solemnly says, "Continuing to serve such a king would make me a traitor to my country," he raises his gaze to meet hers and Alina can't stop herself from nodding along sarcastically, "And my conscience." Does he even hear himself? Has he ever actually listened to the words spilling out of his mouth?
Really, he makes himself sound so hard done by from where he sits in a luxurious tent in a position of power to the orphan he collared after holding the life of her dearest friend hostage. He almost sounds convincing, like he actually believes the words he's saying. "So then you're a martyr?" Alina lets her scepticism drip from her mouth in response to his hypocrisy. Even if she did still trust him and had never learnt the truth she wouldn't believe him about this. There's no way he can possibly believe this himself. It's another line to try and manipulate her and get her to believe him and she wants nothing to do with it.
Ideally he never would have entered the tent and she wouldn't be having this conversation with him. But Alina is a realist. He has things he wants to say to her and she is his captive audience. So she shuts her mouth and just lets her withering stare do the talking for her.
"I would've thought you of all people would understand what it's like." Her of all people? What is that supposed to mean? "To live in hiding for fear-"
And just like that Alina cuts him off because this time she cannot bite back the words, "In hiding?" she near snarls at him, "I've never lived in hiding! Not the way you mean. I might have successfully managed to hide I was Grisha for twenty years, even from myself, but for me there was never any hiding!" she clenches her fists by her sides and keeps the barest façade of composure in place by the skin of her teeth and the grace of long practice at ducking insults as she flings out her words, "You might be able to conceal that you are Grisha – if you took off your kefta and stopped acting like you were the Saints gift to humanity and walked into a random town, I doubt anyone would look at you twice. But that is not a privilege I have ever shared. I might be able to conceal my abilities but there are things that I've never been able to hide, not even if I wanted to: the shape of my eyes; the colour of my skin; the heritage that my mother gave me." She scoffs and turns away from him, furious that he would try to equate them in this.
"But you do understand the fear of being murdered simply for being?" he says, his voice never so much as raising, and she hates him a little more for that. Because there is a difference between not wanting to hide and not being able to. There is a difference between hiding out of self-preservation and wishing to have the ability to do so on days where every stare is glass fragments on your skin. But he is calm and rational and she is being emotional and loud and therefore he has to be the one in the right; because Saints forbid she get upset about the reality that she's had to live with since before she understood what the word 'prejudice' even meant and hadn't realised yet that as long as she lives in Ravka she will be fighting for acceptance purely because of how she looks.
"It's why I built the Little Palace in the first place." The General continues, with barely a pause. He doesn't acknowledge anything that she said beyond that, clearly following some kind of script that he'd had prepared for exactly this sort of encounter, and Alina once again notices that he didn't really ever respond to what she actually said. That he once again deflected the conversation in such a way that it would be easy to feel like he's addressed her point when he's really doing anything but. "Everything that I have done," he surges out of his seat and moves towards her as he talks, and it takes far more effort than she would ever admit, even to herself, to stay put and not back away, "Everything that I have ever done," he's nearly in her space now and she leans back slightly, more of a flinch than actual movement, as he stops short of touching her, but still far too close for comfort, "Has been to make Ravka safer," Alina can't stop herself from rolling her eyes a little as she looks away in disbelief, and his voice increases in intensity if not volume, "To make Grisha safer!"
Alina scoffs because he hasn't done that, not really. If that was what he set out to do then he has failed miserably. All he has done is make people hate them as much as they fear them. He rips children away from their families and raises them in a palace where they eat off golden plates and are taught that they are humble because they eat plain food. He deploys them to the front lines in a never-ending war that they have no way to escape after instilling in them a fanatical loyalty and the idea that they are better than the poor, the abandoned, the otkazat'sya that do not share their abilities. He teaches them to look down on everybody else and to trust him unconditionally and that the best power is fear rather than respect, is resentful hatred rather than appreciation of what they can do. He has painted a literal target on their backs with their bright kefta that tell every single person with a grudge exactly who they are and rather than fostering their solidarity with their fellows in the First Army, he allows them to belittle the soldiers that are less trained, worse equipped, and always short on supplies. And that's just the Little Palace and Second Army as a whole, without getting into specifics.
"Do you think Genya was safe when you placed her under the King's watch? Am I to believe that you will show Baghra mercy? What about how you treat those that would risk the Fold to flee Second Army conscription? The families that are hunted down and face execution and have their Grisha members dragged screaming back to the Little Palace. Or how about those that would run away in search of freedom or bury their gifts like I did because they don't want to be separated from their loved ones? At least the Ravkans in the First Army eventually finish their service. First Army conscription is what? Ten years? Most people get drafted when they're teenagers and are done by the time they hit thirty. Second Army conscription is for life. As soon as Grisha are trained and old enough they're sent to the front lines, and then they'll be soldiers until they die. There is no retirement or civilian life. Is it any wonder that some people think that the risk of fleeing or living a life in hiding is more than worth it?"
The General does nothing but stare at her impassively with an expression that she thinks is supposed to be pity but just comes off as condescending.
Alina shakes her head and lets herself fall right into the role of naïve little girl that he's cast her as, "I could have made Grisha safe, but you never gave me a choice." Alina truthfully doesn't know if getting rid of the Fold would make Grisha safe, but without the constant reminder of the evils the Grisha are capable of continually taking victims from all walks of life, she would like to think that the average Ravkan could learn to get more tolerant, and in a few generations, maybe even accepting. But she does know that change of any kind tends to be slow to come, and attempting to use fear as a tool for your own ends is only ever so effective and loses its bite quicker than most. There is, after all, only so much fear a person can take before they become inoculated to it and adjust to their reality. At that point, what is fear really going to do?
He is silent for a very long moment and Alina's breath catches as she wonders what he's thinking and worries about his reaction. She hates that she fears him – but she does. He might still need her, and she might be planning to break free of his control by any and every means necessary, but she still fears what he is capable of and what he will do if he catches a whiff of what she's plotting. She has never been under the illusion that he is anything but ruthless and dangerous and unrelenting in pursuit of his goals. She had ignored it for a while, almost appreciated it during those days that he had been drawing her ever further in to his web like a particularly fat and stupid fly. But now she remembers that he is a spider and she will never be anything more to him than prey, a pawn, a tool in his arsenal. And he won't hesitate to dispose of her if he thinks she's going to be trouble.
Eventually he speaks, "Perhaps," he says, and something about his tone chills her to the core and raises all the hairs on the back of her neck as she tenses all of her muscles, unsure whether it is in preparation of fight or flight, "But you have given me one." Alina takes a tiny step back, because something about where this is going is giving her a sense of foreboding and she doesn't know what it is, "A chance to make amends." She sees something glitter in his eye and has to immediately squash her urge to flee because if he is to the point of faking tear-filled eyes then she knows that nothing good will come next, "To finally win." Alina takes another miniscule step away from him, poised to run and desperate to put space between them but unwilling to let him see that and fearing what he will do to her, or worse, to Mal, if he realises what she is doing. It's the same feeling she got in that tent when she was on her knees at his mercy and he was doing a very good job at pretending that he was explaining himself. But she hadn't understood what it meant then. "The Fold was not your mistake-"
"The Fold was no mistake!" she immediately snaps back on instinct and has to refrain from cringing. She's so fed up with his lies and misdirections and pretty half-truths that when he stands here with tears in his eyes and tries to make her pity or sympathise with him and calls the Fold a mistake she cannot stop herself from snapping. She is not as good at patience as Mal is and was never all that great at controlling her temper. At this point, it is only desperation and pettiness and spite that are letting her keep a leash on her anger, and even they can only go so far.
There's a pause for a moment as he stares at her, and then he pivots, "I never intended for it to be the blight it's become." Alina feels her mouth twist at the smoothness with which he once more flips the narrative and tries to make himself sympathetic to a person he has personally made sure will never ever be able to forget what he has done to her. "Or for men like the King or- or Zlatan," he spits out the other General's name as his face twists into an ugly snarl that finally reveals the monster hiding behind his impeccable façade, "To exploit it for their own gain!"
Alina scoffs at him before he's even finished talking because, "You put this collar on me to exploit my power for your gain!" she jabs her fingers into her chest so hard it almost hurts as she spits at him in anger and resorts to obliquely spelling out to him exactly why she will never willingly ally herself with him. Because he still does not seem to get it. He still seems to think that there is some way, some lie, some manipulation he can use to convince her to join him and help him in whatever he plans to do. That there is some way, any way, even the slightest chance that she will ever forgive what he has done. But there isn't. He is pretending and lying and trying to convince her to ignore the evidence of her own senses and that her own judgements about what he has done to her are somehow wrong or inaccurate and she is having none of it.
He shakes his head, "For us." He says hoarsely and intently like it will somehow make his words mean something, "To help us conquer the Fold together." Alina shakes her head as he once again gets closer to her and feels her nails pressing into the skin of her chest as she once again tries to lean away from him. He's too close now. Right up in her space and she has to look up to see his face. "You and me." He grabs her wrists and drags her hands towards him in an iron grip before imprisoning them in his own, "You cannot do this on your own." He swallows loudly, almost deliberately and stares at her for a long moment, intensely, "And neither can I."
Alina feels her own face fall as she stares at him. Because he is once more resorting to emotional manipulation in order to get her to do what he wants. The part of her that is not hurt and fuming and clinging to the little composure she has left with the skin of her teeth leaves her enough room to wonder at how pathetic the whole thing is. That he genuinely thinks a non-apology and a couple of fake tears are enough to get her to give way to him speaks volumes about the ease he has had in manipulating everyone else to do his bidding these last few hundred years. But Alina has always been stubborn. And once she digs her heels in, she will not change her mind or give way or go down a separate path, come hell or high water, she will stay her course. No matter the consequences that may come her way.
She idly wonders how she ever fell for his false professions and expressions of vulnerability. Especially with how fake they now look to her. But then again, she was so desperately alone when she came to the Little Palace and felt so horribly isolated – something that she now knows was by his design. It's no wonder she turned to him like a flower seeking sunlight when he came to her and appeared to share his deepest emotional hurts. No wonder that she felt like he was a kindred spirit when it seemed like he could understand her thoughts and feelings without ever knowing them beforehand – something that he undoubtedly did know from her unsent letters and whoever he had had reading her diary.
Every time she thinks she's hit the bottom of the cliff, the floor gives way again as she uncovers another way in which she has been spied upon and lied to and manipulated.
She raises her gaze to his and lets her dismayed disbelief play across her face. The tiny spark of hope that she had not realised still burned quietly snuffs out as she stares at him. Because he still isn't listening, he still doesn't understand, and now she knows that he never really will. Otherwise he would not be talking of conquering and teamwork when she never wanted to conquer anything and any positive feelings she ever had for him are ash and dust in her mouth alongside the bitter taste of betrayal and bile for what he has made of her.
"We could have had this," she whispers quietly, the first true lie she's ever told him, "All of it." She needs to stop him from suspecting that she has other motives and giving him this – what he doesn't really want to hear from her but deep down expects – is the best way she knows to do it. She looks down, and despite how her whole body rebels at the mere idea, reaches for his hand. "You could have made me your equal. Instead you made me this!" She lifts his hand and places it, splayed, over her collarbone, where the two antler prongs meet under her skin. She looks at him and does not bother to hide the furious disgust that permeates every inch of her body, before she forces her face into neutrality.
She steps back, and removes his hand from her skin, keeping one hand pressed to her chest over her collarbone, the pressure it exerts a futile attempt at tricking her mind into thinking that the weight she feels on her collarbone comes from her hand and not the collar.
If there was ever a version of her that could have believed him, that could have trusted his motives and manipulations, they would have died the moment he collared her. Because collaring her is the one crime that she could never forgive him for, no matter what else happened between them. It is an atrocity and a violation and goes against every single thing that every person that she has met since she found out she was the Sun Summoner has ever told her. She forces down her fury and squashes the betrayal that keeps coming back with every new revelation she has.
She shakes her head at him as she backs away. He looks at her without a sound as she moves away from him and the petty and vindictive part of her that she has spent months trying to hide surges forward at the unreadable look on his face and insists that he has to pay for what he has done to her. She raises her other hand to cover her chest too and refuses to let herself tremble, instead keeping her voice steady as she tells him her final accusation, the truth that they both know he cannot hide no matter how he dresses it up. And if it hurts him on the way out, so much the better, if she can cause him even a fraction of the pain that he's caused her then she'll consider it well worth the pain and soul-deep nausea that this encounter has cost her.
"You don't care who suffers as long as you win." Her voice drifts off into an almost inaudible whisper by the end of it, but the flicker behind his eyes tells her she hit her mark.
Good.
He drops his head and looks down in something that could be akin to disappointment or heartbreak but Alina can't tell over the pounding of betrayal and pain and anger that her own heart beats out at every rise of her chest under the heavy weight of the antlers.
"Fine." He eventually bites out, the barest hint of a monstrous snarl that he's been trying so hard to pretend doesn't exist showing itself to her, even as he keeps his voice low and barely louder than a hush between lovers, "Make me your villain." He gives her one last long look, liquid welling up in his eyes and Alina cannot believe his audacity as he tries to show pain and sorrow to her even now. Still. After everything.
She wants to scoff at his false-hearted fake regret but the lump in her throat that she's been ignoring all morning grows bigger and bigger and threatens to stifle her breathing further the longer he looks at her without blinking or looking away, so she keeps her silence in an effort to stifle the sobs she knows are just beneath the surface and will burst out the second she lets herself try to breathe.
He tilts his head at her just the slightest bit in some form of challenge or dare and slowly walks away, maintaining eye contact until the very last moment as he turns to leave the tent.
She manages to keep her silence until he's turned away and through the flaps and then lets out a single almost silent sob for the lonely girl that once believed him and wanted so desperately for what he told her to be true. She allows herself this one moment of sorrow before she forcibly swallows the lump in her throat and forces away the tears burning right behind her eyes.
She ignores the traitorous pang of her heart and thinks about the way he talked and about how he made it seem like an unavoidable eventuality. His certainty and conviction that she'd eventually work with him willingly and come around to his perspective.
But she won't.
Alina has always been a master at holding grudges. She's stubborn and petty and spiteful, and of the two of them, it has always been Mal that's the more forgiving.
Alina will hold a grudge and hate a person until it kills her. And if Kirigan – the General, the Darkling, the Black Heretic – thinks that he's the exception to that then he's very very wrong.
And not least because when it comes right down to it, he's not completely off the mark. He's not as wrong as she would like him to be. He never has been – that's why this whole thing since she entered the Second Army kicking and screaming was so clever and persuasive in the first place.
If things had been different, she might have forgiven him. This man that she's drawn to and repulsed by in equal measures. Who imprisons her and uses a gentle touch to try and bend her to his will in one moment then turns around and speaks of teamwork and family and freedom the next. Who tells her that she's not alone because she has him and who claims to love her and who insists that he will give her his devotion.
Alina knows herself well enough to know that in time, faced with that and an eternity of losing the people she loves to death, she might have weakened to him.
She could have eventually forgiven him for hunting her down when she ran. For forcing her to choose between Mal and the Stag. Given enough time and enough loss, she might even have one day learnt to forgive him for hurting Mal. For threatening him, for using his life as leverage. Maybe. One day.
But he went much too far for any of that. He put a collar on her and enslaved her and ensured that she had a grotesque trophy of a reminder of his power over her wrapped around her neck to be seen every time she glances down at her own body or catches sight of herself in a mirror.
She offered him trust and the benefit of the doubt even after everything else, and he turned around and claimed her and collared her like some sort of pet and Alina will never forgive him that.
Not in a hundred thousand years.
Even if his motives are as pure as he keeps insistently claiming. Even he does nothing but good. Even if he saves the world and uses her power to make all of Ravka safe and makes sure that there are no more orphans because of the Fold and the poverty and the endless wars that all Ravkans end up fighting in.
Because it might be petty and selfish and spiteful, but as an orphan Alina has always had very few things that truly belong to her, very few things that are hers and hers alone and cannot be easily taken away from her. And once she had discovered that she had them, her powers counted as one of them.
And he has violated that in the worst way.
He has taken her powers and found a way to make them his to use at his whim, and even thinking about it makes her feel sick and wrong and force down the urge to claw the antlers out with her nails.
But she doesn't.
She doesn't because she has a plan. And because she really wants to see the look on his face when she pulls it off.
So she waits until she's absolutely sure that he's gone and that no one else is coming in, and then she turns to search the tent.
And it seems like maybe Aleksander never really knew her at all. Because it takes her less than thirty seconds to find something sharp and pointy that she can use as a weapon.
He just left a letter opener lying on the table, made of Grisha steel and as sharp as any hunting knife she's ever used. It's more than adequate for her purposes. She lifts her skirt and quickly tests its sharpness, high on the side of her leg where no one will notice, and is satisfied when it breaks the skin easily. A second quick test, this time on a corecloth cloak that was carelessly left on one of the chairs, shows that it slides through the material easily enough.
She hurriedly hides the letter opener up her sleeve and adjusts the material so that it's hidden but in a place that she can grab it easily and unobtrusively without anyone noticing it. She double checks in the mirror that you can't see that she has it and then swiftly turns around and away when she catches movement in the corner of her eye and hears the tent flap swishing open again.
Another Fabrikator that she doesn't recognise comes in, accompanied by someone in Tidemaker blue with a bundle of golden material in her arms. Alina resigns herself to further fussing and having other people attempt to dress her again, swallowing down her emotions and preparing to deflect them from looking too closely at the way the sleeves wrap around her forearms.
When they are finally finally done and it's time, Alina schools her face so that no one can see her fear or trepidation or anger and tugs once at the cloak that covers her and the shiny gold dress that Kirigan had demanded she be dressed in.
When she steps outside the tent that has doubled as her prison for the last day, she can almost see the way the silence and awe ripples out when people spot her. Kirigan stalks over her shoulder as she moves towards the skiff, not daring to take any risks before she has too. Ivan and the other Heartrender from the forest - Feliks - fan out to either side and Zoya brings up the rear in a smooth flanking pattern. Oprichniki with rifles slung over their shoulders fill in the gaps in the formation and a small, distant part of Alina wonders if this is supposed to make her feel safe rather than the cage it actually is.
The further they walk the more Grisha join them and it takes far more self control than Alina is willing to admit not to bare her teeth or scream at them for not seeing how much of a prisoner she is. These people who would claim her as their own while refusing to accept or acknowledge those parts of her that they do not like - as though if they do not see it then it is not real.
Her eyes dart side to side and she feels more trapped with every new set of eyes that glance their way. She clenches her fists beneath the cloak where no one can see in a desperate attempt to hold on to the barest threads of her self control.
Not yet. It's almost time but not yet.
Everyone is looking at her now and for the first time ever, her former colleagues in the First Army do not have scorn in their eyes when they look her way. If not for the circumstances she might even have enjoyed the way the tables have turned. As it is she is bone deep tired of it all and so full of fear and panic that it comes right back around to a rage that stokes the flames of the anger that is keeping her going long enough that she can make the General stop whether he wants to or not.
With every worshipful gesture of respect for the Sun Saint that she sees the soldiers make, she sees the intangible power of faith that she wields grow and can almost understand Aleksander's desperation to keep her under his thumb by any means necessary. She fears what kind of power she could wield over them if she tried and she thinks if she'd been just a slightly different kind of person then she'd find it almost intoxicating rather than terrifying. As it is the sheer prospect of the raw influence she wields brings to mind far too many pictures of times that she or others she's met have been on the wrong side of a mob and shakes her to her core.
She doesn't want this. She never wanted this. All she's ever wanted was peace, to live a quiet life, where she could be content and her neighbours didn't hate her for not looking Ravkan enough. A farm, with wildflowers and a meadow, a man who loves her for herself, and Mal at her side in whatever way he is willing to be, and maybe a few children: orphans looking for happiness and safety that she can help raise to adulthood with love and affection, so that they can forget the cruelty of the greater world and never have to worry about not being able to get enough food or being hated or belittled for where they come from or what they look like or who their parents were. There's new wishes too: that these children she'd love like her own wouldn't need to fear being different, no matter what form it would take. That they could have aunts and uncles from all walks of life, not just her and Mal, but Genya, and Fedyor, and Nadia, and Marie, and poor dead Alexei and Mal's friends Dubrov and Mikhail lost in the snow of the north. That they'd never know war or poverty or the terror of the Fold and could be what they chose no matter what form it would take. That Alina could grow old with dear Mal at her side and know the wonder of children and grandchildren that come for stories and advice and tell her tall tales and all about the adventures they have when they're out of her sights.
But she can't have that. Not now. Not anymore. She's the Sun Summoner, the Sol Koroleva. She'll never be allowed to live in peace again, those who don't want to follow her out of religious fervour or awe or fear, want to control her or possess her and twist what she can do to their own ends. All she has now is Mal. Dearest Mal who doesn't care who she is or what she can do because to him she's just Alina who stands up to him for bullies and gets sent to the brig for hitting superior officers and who he sneaks away to bring food for and follows into stupidity because they have to stick together the way they always have.
What she wouldn't give to have him by her side and a handful of others who see her as nothing more than Alina. The way she thought Genya and Fedyor and Nadia and Marie did. The way Alexei used to before he died in the darkness of the Fold. She thinks she could live with that.
But this? The way these soldiers stare at her, touching their head and then their heart in a sunburst to show their reverence. It makes her feel sick. She's not this person, she's not who they think she is, who they want her to be. She can't be. Least of all now when she's nothing more than a slave to the whims of the Darkling.
"The tracker's being kept in camp, under guard." Kirigan moves so he's walking slightly ahead of her and pulls her back to the cold reality of antler bone heavy on her neck and ornaments and fancy materials dressing her and Mal's life as collateral for her good behaviour. "Do what's expected of you and he'll be released." The slight emphasis he puts on expected and faint sneer in his face gives away exactly how truthful he's actually being. Alina's not stupid enough to think he won't keep using Mal against her until one of them dies - the tactic's proven it's too effective for him not to milk it for all it's worth.
The faint, fake smile she'd barely managed to keep in place drops at his words and the determination she's been nursing in her breast since she woke up roars to life alongside her bright, burning anger.
She knows what she has to do.
This chapter was actually really hard to write initially and then nearly twice as hard to go back over and edit and a big part of that is definitely the subject matter and Alina's ongoing thoughts about what's been going on.
The Darkling really is a character that I love to hate and he's such a great villain that it almost makes me mad how many people I've seen try to woobify him. Not that I don't get it – he's such a smooth talker that if you're not playing close attention while watching then you could really easily believe what he's saying. He's the single most unreliable narrator in the entire show and also happens to be the most convincing when he talks so it's really easy to get drawn into his narrative. There are several parts of this main interaction that I literally only caught the second or third or even fifth time around and playing with what Alina picked up on and her own cynicism and unwillingness to trust a single word out of his mouth was just really really fun at times.
It's more implied here than outright stated but the Second Army is so similar to an actual cult that it makes my skin crawl. I only noticed on my third watch of S1 but after that I went through with a checklist of warning signs and the 2A hits so many that it's actually scary. So yeah. I don't know how true the 2A's and Darkling's behaviour are to the book, but kudos to LB if it's even slightly accurate – between the Darkling's grooming and this, she really knew what she was doing here.
Also, as a side note, included in the list of things that bother me about the English language: there is no simple equivalent to "man VERB etwas" without sounding awkward and/or formal as hell. Kudos to anyone who spots the sentence fragment I am specifically talking about that would sound perfectly natural if this was not written in the English language.
Also also: the lack of formal 'you'. I so badly wanted to end the Alina/Darkling discussion with them being informal with each other the entire scene with Alina using a formal You right at the end there for her last sentence to put distance and formality back between them, and him refusing to follow her into it and continuing to be informal. I'm not sure how the translations into languages that use a formal You use the difference since the only one I have access to is Polish (which I don't understand) but I'm pretty sure the Darkling will be using inf and Alina f in this scene - at least with how I've written it.
I also have so many thoughts about what Alina wants out of life and how that has changed or adapted over time versus all of the things in that dream that she knows she can't have.