I N B O X

[reznikolai]

@volkvolny NIKOLAI LANTSOV

✉ ☏ 📷

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[underage]

( 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.

[reznikolai]

[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...]

1/2

[underage]

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.

2/2

[underage]

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.

[reznikolai]

[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?

[underage]

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.

[reznikolai]

[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.]

[underage]

( 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.

[reznikolai]

I thought we were discussing the monster's dreams.

[underage]

I wasn't aware there was a difference.

[reznikolai]

One of us is more handsome.

[underage]

Indeed.

( bruh )

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

[reznikolai]

[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?

[underage]

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?

[reznikolai]

[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?

[underage]

Perhaps.

( there is a distinct satisfaction to causing terror. it's the only emotion the darkling has ever been able to reap and sow in the masses — though the grisha all loved and adored him for a time, it was built by the foundations of his intimidation. they feared him, first. new lives and new names, but the mythology behind shadow summoners has been one tower he's never been able to crumble, not that he ever sincerely tried. a population living enslaved to the monarchy needs fear as part of a healthy diet. eventually the horse's back breaks, and uprisings ensue.

he'll have to try harder to wriggle into nikolai's nightmares. as long as he is effective, he is not forgotten. )

Perhaps it would, if I didn't know you lie with every breath you take. Sturmhond, Nikolai, the monster — all parts, and none complete. None of them honest.
You do dream of me, and you don't always dislike it. You don't always loathe the choke.
I suppose that's just another thing Alina has not told you.

( instill breaking, ruination. heavy is the head that wears the crown — to the mind that always whirrs, doubt is like cancer.

the fact remains they only seem capable of fucking when at least one of them is unconscious. )

[reznikolai]

[He wastes a long moment trying to discover what meaning stalks between the lines of that last statement — until he remembers that it's a fruitless endeavor. The Darkling adores mind games. Loves provoking.

Provoking, which is where other words of his succeed, brushing ink across his mind. Painting vivid flashes of memory from the dimness. You don't always dislike it. His mouth full, his jaw splitting, his throat bruising. Insatiability devouring so many holes inside of him.

What to do with these memories, he doesn't know. But he chooses not to be meekened.]

You're hardly celebrated for your honesty.

[Does he dare test it? Nikolai has never shied away from pulling a trigger.]

Aleksander, was it?

[underage]

For all that honesty brightens, it casts long shadows.

( or — being entirely truthful at times just tends to make certain issues worse. while not among his virtues as a man, the darkling wouldn't say he's on par for lying the way nikolai dons masks to overlay his inner self. aleksander is only ever himself — at least at this point, unburdened by the years he spent cultivating new names, new lives, the son of himself and himselves, brought to this moment.

he's only the darkling. the black heretic. aleksander morozova, yes, to find it both freeing and damning to have his true name on nikolai's mind. )

Present.
It appears you've remembered. Glad to see your mind is in working order.

[reznikolai]

[Haha, fuck.

So the Darkling knows. And he knows that Nikolai knows.

Is he humiliated? The man who made his life a living hell has seen him cracked completely open, a whimpering quivering thing in the thrall of lust. Every filthy word that had so easily dripped from his tongue in that dream, every degrading act he'd bowed to, comes back as ghosts to haunt him. He should be humiliated. The Darkling certainly wants him to be.

But hadn't desire pulled him down too? Not a monster, just a man. Aleksander. Double-edged is the weapon he wields against Nikolai.

So even though he doesn't know what to think, what to feel, he knows he cannot give the Darkling what he wants.]

How could I forget? I finally found the one thing you might be useful for.

I thought you didn't dream.

[underage]

And I thought you didn't dream of me choking you.

( two liars having a standoff, then. despite what the darkling would claim — it was a dream, in all different meanings of the word. he craves domination, and nikolai gave that to him in surplus. )

What do you think I'm useful for, then? Be blunt.

[reznikolai]

Is your sad flaccid ego in need of stroking?

[underage]

Apparently, not much of mine is flaccid around you.

[reznikolai]

[...Are they sexting now...?

The smart thing to do would be to stop answering, but that would be letting Aleksander win. The Darkling. Letting the Darkling win.

(Win what?)]

An improvement from all our prior encounters, really.

[underage]

You find this agreeable, then.
Interesting.

[reznikolai]

Improvement is a relative term. When you start at zero, the only place to go is up.