fic: these holy bones
Jun. 29th, 2020 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vvitchsdesireTitle: these holy bones
Fandom: Grisha Trilogy
Rating: T
Wordcount: 2170
Summary: Alina figured that a dead man did not need all the bones he once had.
Her wedding with Mal was over after two years. If Alina is honest, the actual time frame is closer to one year, six months and a few scarce days: the precise date where he left their home, chasing the high of his connection with the forests, seeking a way to grab it back, refused to imprint itself on her memory.
He had held her hands, smiled, said: I'll get it back. For both of us, and then left in the middle of the night, a rucksack on his back like some child's fairytale. Alina had stood on the doorstep, freezing as she watched his back grow small, smaller, until it disappeared completely from her view.
She'd known the two were broken after the events that led to their losses, more profound than any others. Alina had hoped that time would assuage his grief, thought she would be enough to make him happy. She'd never been, had she? If she was, this wouldn't be happening.
Alina wanted to scream. Did he think he was the only one hurt? She had fought so hard to grasp the powers, and when she'd finally grown comfortable with them, they were gone beyond where she could follow. Alina cried bitterly, sitting at the porch where Mal had left her.
The children awoke to find her half-frozen, immobile, with a cape of snow on the floor behind her, teeth chattering. Her fever lasted two days, Alina's consciousness coming and going and coming, old figures appearing at the edge of her vision.
Aleksander was her most frequent visitor, sitting on the bed, only his gray eyes visible on the darkness of the room, only the paleness of his hands when he deigned himself to touch her: he'd push away the strands of her hair from her sweaty face, change the wet towel on her forehead. Facsimiles of caring, perhaps, for a broken heart.
It felt too real: she'd whine, say no, but the hallucination would not stop. He'd touch her face and whisper words her fever-addled brain could not understand, and Alina would beg for him to go away.
He never did.
Aleksander stayed there until the dawn of the third day, when the fever broke and she finally got out of bed, explain the situation to the children, to the tutors, with Aleksander on her ear telling Alina what to do.
The lie was easy, simple: Mal had been called to Court, without prevision on coming back. Urgent matters, you see. The money would still come in, she assured them.
The adults relaxed. The children were sad. Alina smiled, pretended everything was okay. She kept moving forward, and kept the itchiness of her hands away by ignoring the light rays that came through the window, painting the walls with murals that grew even more complex with every layer of drawings, with every fresh sheen of paint. They stop being beautiful at some point, and became the horrors of her mind, the things she saw and could not, would not, see again.
When Mal's body arrived in a closed casket, Alina pretended to be shocked. She arranged a funeral systematically, flowers and fabrics and sewing, moving her life for a few days.
During it all, Aleksander in every shadow, running commentary, like a ghost that spoke what she thought about, only crueler, wearing the face of a dearly missed… Enemy, perhaps, was the right word to use, but Alina did not enjoy using it. Aleksander would have smiled told her see, Alina? I told you so, and he wouldn't have left her. Maybe his ghost stayed with her because of that.
She did not invite Nikolai. She did not invite her friends. This was her curse to bear, listening to the rambles of a dead man as she put the only person who loved her to rest.
Alina lasted three days of flurry, of keeping herself busy to not think, before opening the casket, ripping off the nails that kept Mal safe from the outside. Inside the cheap wooden coffin laid Mal, looking peaceful and smiling. She wanted to scream, but kept quiet.
On his hands, clasped together at his heart, the horns of a deer long dead, familiar white bone in a necklace she thought broken; a bracelet of snakeskin, mended together. And his body, still and intact, with Aleksander daring her to do what she wanted to do.
There was a letter, neatly tucked underneath his hands, almost imperceptibly. A familiar scrawl told her of what he'd found, after she gently prodded his corpse out of it, reading carefully.
She closed the casket with the same nails after she took a few souvenirs from his body, Aleksander's sweet voice guiding hr movements, his hands on hers as she profanated Mal's body. It wasn't hard: Mal was already at that state of decomposition where all tissues were as soft as silk, easy to rip apart with her bare hands.
Besides, Alina figured that a dead man did not need all the bones he once had, not when the coffin was closed, and the only one who knew what happened was Alina and the hallucination accompanying her.
Alina pocketed the letter after she cleaned her hands on her black dress, slipped the bracelet on her wrist - a familiar weight that made tears spill out of her eyes - and the necklace, closing it with red fingers, dripping blood and marrow on her neck.
The powers she so missed bloomed from her hands as soon as she put the icons, and Alina laughs, mad, as light pours from her hands. Only death can pay for life, Mal had written, and he was right. Death had taken her powers once, and now death had given her powers back to her - but at what cost?
Aleksander smiled, terrifying, as she lit up the chapel, watching with fascination only a ghost could have.
The funeral went smoothly. Alina was the pitch perfect picture of a widow, somber and quiet underneath the black veil. She comforted the crying children in the empty chapel, and watched as Mal went under the frozen earth.
She felt alive again, like the entire time before Alina had been living in black and white, in (and this earned a giggle for her) the dark.
If it hadn't taken a death for Alina to finally feel alive once more, she'd laugh out loud.
She stared at the shadow of a man in front of her, Alina playing with a small light, getting used to the weight of her powers once more. Alina made it move, go from one palm to another in one smooth movement, rolling by her shoulders to reach its destination, as regular as the tick tock tick tock of the clock.
"I wonder if I could do the same for you." Alina asked, not looking at him. Aleksander, sitting in her bed, waited. "Same trick, in the end."
"I need a body." He pointed out, and Alina looked at him, waving her hands. The bones of Mal that she wore as jewelry jingled softly, clashing against her skin, smelling faintly of copper. She hesitated to take them off, fearful that if she did, her powers would go away. "Unless, of course, you have one at ready."
She did not, but really, that wouldn't be hard to find.
Before leaving, Alina looked at the orphanage.
Maybe she hadn't been made to stay there. Maybe it had been a temporary place, transitory. She'll never know; Aleksander is calling her, telling her to move.
She does.
"Not him." Aleksander said. They were back in Os Alta, and Alina, sitting at a small cafe, looked, irritated, to her ghostly companion.
"You find a fault in every man." Alina mutters, pretending she's reading. She's paid a Tailor to have her hair dyed, and more to keep it a secret. So far, it was working. "Your body was burnt in a pyre. Get over it and pick one."
He huffed, rolling his eyes, and Alina glared at her ghost.
"It's the body I'll be spending the next centuries on, Alina. I think I have the right to be picky, since you so viciously dislodged me of my last one."
He sighs, dramatic as he can be. They watched people pass by in silence, and as Alina asked for some more tea, please, since it seemed like they were going to be there for a while - Aleksander pointed at a man. Alina looked at him as soon as the waitress left, and was startled.
"You just want to be taller, don't you." She deadpanned, watching as a priest of some sort moved around the stalls, unconsciously dropping down so his head wouldn't hit the fabrics that protected the goods from the sun. He looked like Aleksander, were Aleksander a soldier with a mop of black hair on his head and a scar on his arm, black as the night. The work of a volcra, perhaps.
Aleksander huffed at her commentary, but did not deny it. Alina looked at the man, who seemed to be chatting excitedly to someone who definitely did not look excited about it.
"Oh, geez, that weirdo is back at it?" The waitress muttered, putting the tea on the table. Alina looked at her, raising an eyebrow, and the waitress grew flustered. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't -"
"It's alright, I was curious. Who is he?" Alina soothed the woman, and the waitress bit her lower lip.
"That's Yakim. He's lost a lot in the war, you know. Too much, maybe." A shudder coursed through the woman, and Aleksander started laughing maniacally. Perhaps these two events were related. "He's a bit crazy, if you ask me."
"Yes. Bit crazy." Alina sipped her tea, and made a mental note to tip the woman generously.
It wasn't hard to follow Yakim after she finished her tea. He was the tallest person around, and stopping people regularly to talk as if they were friends, then having to find someone new when the people escaped from him. Alina soon found herself as one of these people, but voluntarily.
"Hello, would you be Yakim?" She asked, and he turned, looking at her with familiarly unfamiliar eyes. Alina stammered, and Aleksander started staring at the man from every possible angle, as if he was a particularly sought-after commodity.
Well, he was, or at least his body was.
"Oh! Hello there. Are you new? Haven't seen you around these parts." He grinned, and Aleksander choked. Yakim was shining like the sun, like the light Alina produced, so contrary to Aleksander it was like a reverse version of him.
Good, she thought. He deserved that.
"Oh, yes. Very new. May we go somewhere private? I have news for you." She smiled, and the man seemed pleased. It wasn't a lie; she did have the news that he soon was going to be possessed by a ghost.
Alina led him to a dark alley, through maze-like corridors of walls, doors and windows closed behind them. There would be no need for interruptions, she figured, as she came to a stop in a particularly secluded corner. During the entire walk, Yakim kept speaking, saying everything that came to his mind and more.
Alina did not wait long to act. She hit his head with a loose brick, and he fell to the ground like an empty sack. She stared at the body, leaning down, prodding his face with a finger.
"Remind me to not cross you." Aleksander muttered. He used his feet to gently kick the fainted man, and frowned. "I guess he needs to be dead."
Nothing would be so simple.
"Can you heal him?" Alina asked, grabbing a shard of glass from the floor. Aleksander shrugged, so she took it as confirmation, slashing his throat. Blood spurted out, and Aleksander disappeared, becoming black mist, entering through the wound and becoming something akin to a scab. Grabbing one of Mal's bones that dangled in her ears, she put a small chip from it on the scab, that absorbed it immediately. If it had worked for her, it would work for Aleksander, right?
Alina watched as the mass of mist throbbed in the wound, and waited.
An infinite amount of time later, Yakim groaned, and Alina snapped back to attention, looking at his throat. Where once had been a bleeding wound, a faint black scar remained, and he sat on the ground, opening grey eyes.
"You're vicious." Aleksander said, in a familiar tone. He raised a hand as he rose to his feet, Alina following suit, producing a small ball of shadow, and smiled at it.
"But I'm effective, am I not?" Alina replied, and Aleksander's free hand found hers, intertwining their fingers. "Saints, I hate to say it, but I missed you."
He smiled, gentle, almost. Foreign. Perhaps he hadn't grown used to his new body, didn't know yet how to produce a smirk.
"I don't plan on going anywhere, unless you kill me again."
Alina shook her head.
"I won't."
