reznikolai | I N B O X

Sleeping well lately?

I didn't know you were so concerned with my well being.

Or is it that you like to imagine me tossing and turning?

It's just curiosity. The beast seems at bay.
Does it dream?

[Does it feel, too? The echo of a strange dream that comes to haunt him in the daylight every now and then. Teeth and fingers sinking into his flesh, throbbing heat splitting him in half. He pushes it back under the surface as he always does.]

We've made friends with each other. The dark isn't so terrible once you know what's hiding there.

Does it dream? It dreams that it's late to its lessons and it's forgotten to put on trousers.

[Giving serious answers is overrated.]

You are welcome for the friend, then.

Does it dream of her?

( who her is goes well without saying. the only her the darkling ever speaks of. )

You might make one for yourself next.

Do you?

I would, but you might not feel so unique, otherwise.

A question with many answers.

Oh, so many qualities make me unique. For instance, there's only one king of Ravka.

It's a yes or no question. But perhaps two is a big number for you?

Has she not told you your future? Interesting.

I do not dream.
But she calls me when she is lonely.

[A sickening twist in the pit of his stomach, but Nikolai knows he's just trying to get under his skin.]

Then she must have called the wrong number.

What do you mean, my future?

[Another hook to snare him by, probably, but he has to ask. Zoya had told him of what was to come, but the Darkling is still talking about Alina, right?]

( aleksander does so love it when he knows things the others don't. death has made him a gossip. )

My, Alina withholding information? I'm shocked.

Your future. The future of Ravka.
I wasn't there when you abdicated your throne, though I heard you made quite the spectacle.

[His thoughts spin for a long moment, trying to construct a possible future in which he just...gives up. Walks away from sinking wreckage of Ravka. What the hell happened? Of course, anything the Darkling says ought to be taken with a whole salt cellar.]

You could at least try to make your lie halfway believable.

[Making a spectacle does, however, sound a lot like him...]

I don't lie.

( really, he doesn't care if anyone believes him — they'll all face their own realities soon enough. aleksander is in no real rush to get back to his fate, though he's not running from it either. )

There's no king of Ravka.
There is, however, a queen.

Before you ask, spare us both the headache of explaining that Alina won't leave the countryside with her tracker, and has no interest in the throne.

The name you are looking for is Zoya Nazyalensky. The Dragon Queen.

[As he stares at that name, the picture becomes a little clearer in his head. Well, if there is anyone he can entrust Ravka to—]

I never expected YOU would be the one to set my mind at ease about Ravka's fate.

What's the catch?

No? I'd rather have her on the throne than you. We both know the Lantsov family has been in power too long.
In fact, I'm quite satisfied by the events.

What catch? That's it.
She's queen. You're her pirate consort.
I ascend to sainthood. The world spins on.

[He had wanted to pull Ravka into the future, hadn't he? Wanted to excavate his country from underneath the oppressive dust of the past? Perhaps the solution all along was ending the Lantsov dynasty.

His mind buzzes with a world of new possibilities, but one detail still challenges even his pliant imagination. Her consort. He finds himself scouring every moment he's ever shared with Zoya, trying to find some hint that this could ever be more than a barb, a joke in which he's the punchline. Zoya, a silent but reassuring presence beside him while they tackle mountains of paperwork. Zoya occupying him with conversation as she shackles him to his bed. Zoya holding him in the back of a coach while he shakes in the wake of the monster. Zoya flaying him with her sharp tongue again.

It's hard to imagine her bestowing anything as gentle as a kiss on him. No, not hard...he's thought about it, hasn't he? It's hard not to. But idle daydreams have no place in reality.

A political alliance, then. She wouldn't leave Ravka in another man's hands either. That must be it.]

So the monk got his wish. Congratulations, Sankt.

[Aleksander, the dark corners of his mind supply.]

( it's not a misconception aleksander has any drive to clear up, besides. by his own noted marks, his own observations both in the hot seat and beside it, shackled beside the pair of them on the traveled road to shu han — nikolai and zoya both part their legs for power. he believes they're as in love as nikolai is with alina, which is to say, not very much at all.

but, love is childish. power is power. love bows in the hierarchy of human emotions, always cast aside and forgotten. kings have no right to the feeling, and neither do queens, and neither do saints. the three of them might stand to learn it. )

And to you, Sturmhond.

( he has no softness for the pirate. privateer. but he can acknowledge they'll both be satisfied in the end, for as unsatisfying as that is. such an uncomfortable feeling, to realize either one of them can be reasoned with. )

Now, about your dreams.

I thought we were discussing the monster's dreams.

I wasn't aware there was a difference.

One of us is more handsome.

Indeed.

( bruh )

One of you takes instructions well. Or, perhaps that's both.

[The dream he'd shared with Alina — more vivid than the nightly vapors his conscience usually drifts through — allows for the possibility that the dream of writhing in shadows with the Darkling had been a mutual affair. A troubling possibility. He tries to contain it in the dimmest reaches of his thoughts.

But just like in the dream, this is a weapon upon which he can let himself be impaled — or one he can grab by the handle to wield himself.]

Are you sure you're not thinking of your own dreams now?

I told you ( such double edged meanings to his words, half truth and half something else. ) I do not dream.

( though he does, a dreamer at his heart. painting cruel ideas up in the fluff of dreaming clouds doesn't change their cruelty, though — you can dream up all manner of horrors. degrading, deficient things. nikolai lantsov's parted lips, parted legs — defiled.

not a dream. the darkling doesn't dream. he either has or he doesn't, and nikolai? well. he's not sure where he falls on that particular path. it should be one way, and yet he cannot deny the other, a weird impulse there to make certain nonexistent, unimportant, unremarkable dreams a reality. that drive, neverending. nights spent up recounting the forgotten king on his back, wondering if he and alina don't fall asleep under the same sky after all, nikolai painted beneath their eyelids. )

You do. Do you not?

[Again, a half-forgotten thrill rising from the murk of his memories: almost give him what he wants, but twist it into a thorn in his side. Except he doesn't know what the hell the Darkling wants from him now.]

I used to dream of you. All around me. [Inside me.] Feeding me darkness and watching me choke.

[He feels half-insane admitting this to the man himself. But those dreams don't touch him anymore, waning in power as his control over the monster waxes.]

Does it break your heart that I don't anymore?

text. » un: lesombres

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

2/2

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject