fic: chess
May. 8th, 2021 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vvitchsdesireTitle: chess
Fandom: The Grisha Trilogy/Shadow and Bone (TV)
Rating: G
Wordcount: 2473
Summary: When she lights up the room, you know your downfall has started.
She doesn't look like much: a scrawny soldier, face dirty with the remnants of blood. She smells like the fold: that wonderfully familiar mix of ozone and iron. She looks scared as she speaks, as if you're the king and she, a peasant, brought in to pay for her crimes. A mere pawn, one that you'll test its mettle in the board.
Right. You ignore it. You ignore her words, approaching, sauntering in. There's words spilling out of your mouth. You're not even hearing yourself speak. How long since you have? All your words seem like you've said before, and you're so tired of the sound of your voice.
There's a question itching under your skin: is she? Is she the one you've been looking for? Underneath the dark smell of the fold coming from her, something else drumming, a heartbeat begging for freedom: the warmth of a sunny day.
Your body moves before your mind: a quick cut on her arm, a gasp of pain. She doesn't bleed in red.
When she lights up the room, you know your downfall has started.
Do you know how to act like a human being anymore? That's the question that begets an answer, and it seems more and more like it being a negative one. Every move you try seems rusted, like humanity has fled you when you… Nevermind.
It's been - how long? How long since you actually trust someone else? Yes, there's Ivan and Fedyor and Genya, but these are pawns, mere chess pieces, spendable and useful until they are not. You trust them with information, but bits and pieces, morsels of truths and lies. Every day there are new Heartrenders, new Tailors. A Sun Summoner, holy and saintly and not so mortal, does not come by every day.
Maybe that's why you tell her your name: Aleksander. a name of peasants and kings alike. A human name, not the title your shoulders have been carrying for so long. How many did you have? Black Heretic, Eryk, general Kirigan, a long list that only grew with every decade, with every century.
Aleksander had never been an option you'd given before. Only one person knew it. Now two, you supposed.
At least you didn't loathe Alina. That was a start.
But how could you loathe her? When she smiles, it's like there's no one else in the room. When she speaks, the world's noises grind to a halt. And in the spare few moments her hands reach for you? Oh, that's as close to whatever sort of paradise there is for someone like you, whose hands are coated in blood.
Are you in love? That's a question you'd rather not answer. Feelings are not something you need, do you? You've managed so well so far.
You spin lies that are half-truths and truths that are half-lies. Maybe you should pick up weaving as a hobby; you're so good at this.
The story about the coin is truth enough. The loneliness is real. The boy is real. The child he once was, and that never admitted to it, grown: how proud are you of yourself? What a life you created for grisha.
She smiles, holds your hand. There's light in the darkness, and it is her: a beacon in the night you produce. Alina summons the sun into your miserable life, and saints, you allow it. It's so terribly lonely, to be the only one of your kind, cursed with immortality, blessed with longevity.
She'll make a wonderful partner, one day - the realization startles you, so sudden the thought is. What are you, a teenager? You haven't been one in centuries. You don't even look like one. There are no excuses for these thoughts.
It's her youth. It's the fact Alina is still enamoured with life, that she still sees beauty in the mundane. From pawn to queen, promoted across the board: there's a beauty to it you cannot possibly describe. You haven't seen something akin to that since… since...
Better to not dwell on it. Can you even remember?
She tends to have insomnia. So do you. You can hear her walk past your door in her nightly peregrinations - light, as if afraid you're a monster that will snatch her inside and swallow her whole if she is heard. You wouldn't do that to her, of course, but it isn't something you can say, unprompted, in polite conversation.
You pretend to not hear, poring over maps. Ravka needs so much. The grisha need so much. You can offer nothing but your brain, your smarts, your centuries of knowledge, and some days it fails to come up with any strategy that'll help your army.
You need gold, but the coffers are empty. The armies are depleted, hanging by the tatters of a populace that grows angrier about this nonsensical war with every passing year. You're fighting a losing war, one that you created.
What is the price of brilliance? You know: it marks down your flesh in rivulets of black, scars that were sketched with your own powers. You don't wear anything that shows skin anymore for a reason.
There's a knock, gentle: Alina comes in a moment later, in her hand two mugs full of tea, fragrant and pleasing.
"Can't sleep?" She asks, and her smile melts away the dark that consumes you. She's beautiful, her dark hair framing her face, and before you realize it, you're smiling.
"Not at all. This," a sweeping grand gesture that brings her eyes to the table, full of maps and sketches of formations, like playing chess on a grand scale. What is war but chess, really - except the pawns are alive, and their deaths mean something. ", has been consuming my attention for the past few hours."
She approaches in quick steps. You go slightly to the side, allow her to slide by your side - warm, so warm, the mugs deposited on the table as her eyes scan the maps, the positions of the pieces that represent entire armies.
"Looks like hard work." Her hand reaches for the Fold, tracing its shape carefully. Alina in deep thought: does she wonder about whether she'll be able to end it?
"War is hard work, and I know not what to do anymore." Darkness swirls in your thoughts, in your room: it's so easy to open up to her. This is neither half truth nor half lie. For once, you're being open with your feelings.
When she touches your skin and lights up the room, you know you are fallen.
You know what you have to do. You're a man who put his morals aside the day you created the Fold: blood for blood. Eye for eye. This was the price for the safety of grisha in a world almost designed to kill you, to hate you.
Yet it pains you. Why? Aren't you relentless, Darkling? Why does the thought of sacrificing one measly girl hurt you so? You've sacrificed so many measly girls and boys to reach where you are, your every step coated in blood and viscera - and yet.
And yet Alina smiles, a lamb to the slaughter as she uses her powers, talking to you gently. She's sitting on your table, drinking her tea - a habit you two gained when both are lacking sleep. You pour yourself over maps, and she keeps your sanity intact.
Alina talks and talks and talks: inanities of her day, of her training with Baghra, of her meals (to which she gives you a very light kick for and says, "can we eat something other than cod?" and to which you laugh). You tell her of strategies, of plans, of rations.
Alina does not hold answers to your problems. It still feels good to talk to someone, though. She points out parts of the map she has seen, she has known, areas where passing supplies would be easier than common routes because they are not as known, because the fjerdans don't know. You tell her the little tricks of summoning, the finer details not written in books and long forgotten by time. Knowledge erodes so fast, when not written down, and so many grisha died before doing so.
"How do you know so much?" Alina asks one night. Your mugs are long empty, and you're sitting in your chair, reading a letter from near Chernast: someone has taken your offer. You toss it aside. So many have taken the offer. So many have produced nothing but headaches and coffins to bury.
"I've seen too much." And it's the truth. Her hands reaches for yours, and you give it to her. Her fingers tread your hands lightly, as if you're the one who can break.
How does it feel to break, again? It's been so long.
"I've never seen… well, more than Ravka, really. I think I know more about the geography of places than what they look, themselves." Her face turns to you, smile stamped on her face. "At least I wouldn't get lost."
"When you're presented to the world, there is a high chance the king shall have you sent to another places to show off. I'll go with you. There's a place in Ketterdam that sells this marvelous chocolate cake, I think you'll enjoy it." You speak as if it wasn't centuries ago. As if the same small bakery still stands in place. As if time has not passed by you and killed everyone you once knew.
"Will the king even allow you to leave?" Alina asks, her hand still on yours.
"What he can even do against me? The grisha follow me." Alina cocks her head, thoughtful. "Besides, how can I leave you alone? Someone must help you make you stand brighter than anyone else."
"I'd love to have your company." Alina replied after a mere moment. Her hand does not leave yours.
You call for Ivan, but it's Alina who puts your kefta on your shoulders.
You've unlearned how to wear a mask: there's surprise etched in your face, reflected in the darkness of her eyes. It's easy to formulate it, once again, into you. Wear the mask. You do not have time for feelings, as much as you want to.
"You're not Ivan."
"Yes, I lack the height." She jokes. "sSorry I'm not him."
"It's alright, really." Because it is - you prefer Alina to anyone else, these days. You're two sides of the same coin. "What brings you here?"
"Your voice?" You walk with her to the safety of the war room, away from your bed. Alina smiles. She smiles so much nowadays, so different from the skittish little thing at the tent a lifetime ago. "I don't know. Habit, maybe. It seems like I'm always coming back here."
"I must say, I'm glad you are coming here, Alina. Power is quite the lonely thing."
Her hands reach your kefta once more: she straightens it, starts doing the clasps gently. There's care in the movements, as if afraid that you'll break with pressure.
It's more love you have felt in - decades. No one touches you as if you're breakable, because you're not - but does she know that?
Alina Starkov is your downfall: she's a meteor, a star that burns so bright she threatens to blind you, and she does it all without thinking. There's no planning, no scheming you can sense, and you're so good at sensing it. Alina does it because she wants to, because she feels like it, and you, a man who has never seen such light, can't help but stare until your retinas melt.
She looks at you, her hands still on your kefta. You look at her, and you do not move. The word comes to a standstill, and it's just you two, for a long moment that stretches into infinity.
It's Alina that kisses you, but you're the one falling.
Before you leave, you return for a kiss. The sensation of her lips against yours burn, but it isn't unpleasant. No, it's quite pleasant: it carries you through, the promise of warm skin and warm powers on your table, waiting for you.
When you return, and Alina is missing, it stings.
You're a man consumed. You're a man with a mission. Feelings cannot possibly impede you. You shouldn't even have those, in first place: it's always straying from the plans you make that is your downfall.
That's why, perhaps, you look at her as you kill Morozova Stag. You want to see her hurt, even if it pains you to do so. Punishment for you, punishment for her.
She screams. Calls you a murderer, but you've been called worse, have you not? Murder is at the beginning of the list of your sins, and it is an infinite thing.
She sobs. She sobs, and it breaks your heart. But you're not Ilya Morozova, and you can not breathe life into beings. No, all you're good for is death.
Your mother has made that much clear.
You reach out for her. She turns her face away.
You're fallen.
The antlers grow out of her skin, beautiful and horrible, like vines on skin except gruesome. There's a matching piece of bone in your hand. Alina is sitting on the floor, looking at you like the monster you are, and you lower yourself to her level.
"It's not my intent to hurt you." Do you say her name? Do you even have the right to do so, anymore?
Her glare could level mountains, her anger burning as bright as the light she produces in her palms.
"And yet you did. Aleksander, you could've… Asked. You know? If you had explained, if you had told me what you wanted to do…" She shakes her head, touches the antlers with fascinated disgust. "Maybe I would've agreed. Maybe not. But you would have given me a choice."
"What do you want me to say, Alina?" She cringes at the name. You correct your course. "Miss Starkov. Ask me, and I shall do it."
There's something in her eyes you can't decipher, when she hears miss Starkov; as if you two are strangers once more.
You are. After what you did, do you really expect to be welcomed back, open arms? Do you expect for more sleepless nights in each other's company in the war room? You've demoted her from queen to pawn.
"Take these off me."
You rise. She lets out a strangled cry as you leave.
Alina, you scream as she leaves, her back turned to you. But Alina won't ever answer to you anymore. She's taken off the amplifier you controlled, and it's not the wound that stings the most.
From pawn to queen to pawn, and then - back at queen, except this time she is not on your side. You've lost control of the board.
