reznikolai | I N B O X

[ Yes. And no. It's no longer a question of might. ]

Please, I just want to go home.

Sorry. We don't have to talk about it now.

I only meant that I understand, because it scared the hell out of me too.

[It's not an emotion he confesses to often, fear.]

I'm on my way now.

[ All of the warm, soft feelings that Inej and Kaz might have pulled out of Alina with their playful roasting of Nikolai fades— well, no. It doesn't fade. It's still there, but it feels different. More painful when she sees him again, and somehow love manages to feel like a painful ache in her chest when she's confronted with the reality of it all.

I love you Alina, and she ducks her gaze away for a moment when she hears it ring in her ears. She wants to pretend it never happened. She wants Nikolai to sweep her into her arms and tell her it a thousand times. She wants, and that's the problem.

Alina puts on a reassuring smile for Inej before she leaves. Maybe she isn't so bad at playing a role, but she won't need to for very long.

The walk down to the street and the car is silent. She slips into the passengers seat. Her head rests against the cool glass, following the path of raindrops as they roll across the window.

When she speaks, she surprises herself with the question. ]

Who is Dominik?

[He lets the silence settle between them undisturbed. As much as he wants to say something — words of reassurance, one of their dear private jokes, I'm sorry, I love you — he resolves that whatever conversation they have now, it should be on Alina's terms.

What to expect from her, he doesn't know. Not the question that arises in the quiet of the car, amid the steady murmur of the engine and the patter of rain. His long pause of silence might be mistaken for his missing the question as he concentrates on the road — if not for the subtle tightening of his blackened fingers around the steering wheel, timed with a deliberate inhalation.

The stab of grief is for both his friend and his would-be son, who might still bear the name someday, true, but never the particular expressions of the girl beside him.]

Dominik was my friend when I was a boy. I regarded him as my brother. [A quiet scoff.] Hell, I loved him more than I did my actual brother.

[His gaze does not stray from the road for even a moment. He has not spoken of Dominik aloud since he was laid to rest there on the battlefield, one of thousands upon thousands of Ravkan boys returned to the soil of his motherland with a bullet in his guts in place of hope. Since he visited Dominik's family to grieve with them, to apologize for failing to protect their son.

Instead, Nikolai has carried his name and memory inside his heart like an oath. I'll do better. A private thing, the shadow of his public oath to serve Ravka. For all his gifts of language, he feels that he cannot adequately explain his friend's significance. Any attempt risks dishonoring his memory, which is the closest thing Nikolai has to anything sacred.

But for her, he can try.]

Edited 2021-12-05 18:42 (UTC)

[ Alina has learned the private language of Nikolai. She sees the small ways he moves, the slight way his knuckles tighten around the steering wheel, the press of his breath. The kingly disguise put aside, but he is not free with his emotions. Still, she sees him, knows him closely and dearly, her mind filling in the spaces of of his joy and sorrow about their children, their lives. The Dominik of the past and the one that will never be.

Never be hers that is. Nikolai might still have a son, one that would naturally bear the name of his friend.

She may be dense, but she isn't so unaware that she cannot hear the meaning behind the was in was my friend, the past tense of regard. It is not a simple parting that led to their separation. Her gaze is downward, at the sweatpants she belatedly realizes she's pilfered from Inej. She still approaches it cautiously, like trying an injury. She knows this will hurt, she knows that each step down this path will only cement a fate made more worse by her foolishness.

And still she asks, because apparently she's a glutton for pain. ]

What happened to him?

[The quiet sigh prefacing his answer encompasses the whole of the story, and at the same time barely brushes the surface of it.]

The same thing that's happened to thousands of Ravkan boys. [A Fjerdan bullet in the guts. The realization that there's no such thing as glory out there.] We were stationed up at Halmhend. I left an officer, and he...never left.

[His voice quavers in a way he despises — and maybe that's another reason has never spoken of Dominik in all the intervening years, so many now that they almost equal the full span of their friendship. He doesn't know how to control the grief that wells up fresh when he wades through those memories. Show weakness so they know that you're human, but never when you actually feel weak.

But Alina has seen him at his smallest. Held him together when he thought he might crack apart. What's one more scar to bare to her? His glance flickers on her, reassuring him of her presence, before returning to the road.]

I was naïve enough to believe that because he was my friend, and because I was a prince, he would be all right. We'd both make it. [A terse shake of his head, as if rebuking his younger self.] In the end, I'm nobody special.

[This country gets you in the end, brother.]

Edited 2021-12-11 00:25 (UTC)

[ She can put the rest of the pieces of this story together. It's one she's heard many times before, even if they don't talk about the war much. She had almost forgotten Nikolai was in the infantry. Even her own service had seemed like a lifetime ago. Alexei. Mikhael. Dubrov. Eva. Raisa. More names than she could ever recall. Ravka was not kind to its sons and daughters.

She sinks further into the seat of the car, pulling her jacket more tightly around her. It does not stop the feeling of sudden awareness of the collar biting into her pulse. Selfish, it seems to beat. Selfish, selfish, selfish. Why is her happiness worth even one more Dominik? ]

No. [ And it's not meant to be condescending, just the blunt uncensored honesty of Alina. Two boys couldn't end the war with Fjerda. Nikolai isn't the one who will vanquish the fold. Resigned, that is her fate. ] You're not.

[ She retreats back into silence, seeking the comfortable familiarity of distance while she looks for patterns in the storm clouds above. She cannot find that comfort, though. She cannot find something known. The walls between them have been torn down, and left in their place is something wonderful and terrible. ]

It's a good name. For your son one day.

[ For his son. Because that isn't her future. ]

[He wills himself still, as if to minimize the pain while she extracts these words like shrapnel from his flesh. His son, but not hers. I wanted to give you that, he thinks but he holds it in the back of his mouth. What good would it do to let it fly?

When he was courting Alina — back when he thought she couldn't deny him forever — he'd thought that, someday, they might love each other. They might be happy. Saints, sometimes he hates being right.

Because now here's another sacrifice he's agreed to without knowing the toll. While the matter of heirs has long figured into his scheming, and long cast a shadow over his thoughts, it never solidified into anything more than an eventuality. Never carried any weight more than mere practicality. Until now. Maybe it was the negligence his own parents bequeathed on him, or maybe it was the ambitious pace at which his whole life has churned forward, but Nikolai never realized how much he might actually want to be a father.

And what about Alina? Does she want to be a mother? In his present, she has the orphanage to tend to, children enough to fill up any maternal yearning, he supposes. And in her present...it strikes him suddenly that Mal is not an inevitability for her yet. Does she know she might share such a future with him? The marriage bed won't be as luxuriant, but the refuge they create for themselves will be just as sweet. (He hasn't thought about her and Mal together in a long time. Today, he finds, there's no reason to change that.)

All of this, and all Nikolai manages is an affirmative hum in answer.]

He was the reason I wanted to fix Ravka. Not just because he died...but because through him I saw how unequally our country's people live. All the sowing is left to the common people, while the rich get to do all the reaping.

[When he was small, he'd assumed Ravka was a prosperous country. How could he not believe so, surrounded as he was by the opulence of the Grand Palace?]

The only reason his parents could afford to keep all of their children's stomachs full was Dominik's position at the palace. When I realized that, I couldn't get it out of my head.

[He sighs, realizing that his ruminations are wandering.]

Yes... It's a good name to bring into the future.

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