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Chapter Text

Sun Heretic Alina & 'Orphan' Aleksander:

• Intro
• First Meeting

Sun Summoner Nikolai AU deleted scenes:

• Ch 6 - Diary entry
• Ch 10 - Plug [NSFW]
• Ch 18 - Mal
• Ch 20 - Flying

Other:

• Darkolina kidfic deleted scene
• Darkolai time loop epilogue [NSFW]
• Sturmhond/Nikolai deleted scene

Chapter Text

Aleksander's earliest memory—his earliest true memory, which he is sure is genuine recall rather than patched together from a hundred varied re-tellings over the years—is of a strange woman telling him he is useless: not in a metaphorical sense, but quite literally without use.

He can still bring the whole bizarre interaction to mind as clear as the crystal in the decanters which Ana Kuya breaks out for Duke Keramzov's infrequent visits. A bright summer day, the sort spent sun-drunk and dust-bathed in the back roads and fields around the orphanage. Seeking refuge in the shadow beneath the oak tree, only to find it occupied. It hadn't been, he was sure, but there she was, stepping out from it and regarding him with cool grey eyes. He stopped in his tracks, frozen by their piercing gaze.

"Don't dawdle, boy," she called, waving him over irritably. "Come here."

"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," Aleksander replied, mulish. But he drifted closer.

Her mouth quirked with some unknowable emotion. "I'm not a stranger, though, dear Sashenka. Let's take a look at you, then."

Her hand darted out to grasp his wrist. He gasped, pulled off balance. He struggled against her grip, as pain bloomed bright along his skin. She'd scratched him with some kind of claw-ring, and it felt now as if she tugged at more than his arm. As if her long, thin fingers had reached somehow into the deepest heart of him, and were attempting to bring his inner self up to meet his skin. He fought against this, too, shoving the foreign feeling down, down, down, into the furthest recesses of his heart, into the shadow there. Whatever she wanted, it couldn't be good. Whatever it was she wanted, she could not have it. He would hide it—smother it—before he let her take it from him.

After what felt like hours, she let go with a disgusted noise. "Nothing. Useless boy."

He scowled at her, clutching his bleeding arm to his chest. He wasn't useless. He knew all of his letters, and his numbers to a hundred, and could write his name neatly enough to draw rare praise from Ana Kuya. Under the withering force of the woman's gaze, though, he could summon no defense of himself and his abilities. He looked away, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes from the pain and the censure both. When he looked up again, the woman was gone. Not a trace remained of her in the field.

Chapter Text

"Get a move on, Aleks! We're going to be late."

Aleksander ignored Grigori, focusing on doing up his buttons. Even with the gusset ties at their tightest, the military trousers hung loose on his frame. Though he'd shot up with the rest of the orphanage boys during puberty, he'd never filled out as they all had. He'd remained lanky, easily winded, and with little appetite. It was a miracle he'd been accepted into the army at all, but his determination to be useful, despite his lack of physical prowess, had given him a solid footing. He was as well-read in military history and strategy as one could be, limited to the contents of Keramzin's library. He was also proficient at map reading and mathematics, and in possession of first aid skills and a basic grasp of written Kerch.

...He'd been a quiet, lonely child. Liked by all but close to none.

Grigori had apparently tired of waiting. Aleksander shoved his arms through the sleeves of his jacket and ducked out of the tent flap after him, hurrying to the command tent for the day's assignments and shoving his cap onto his head as he went.

When his name was drawn from the hat for Scorch crossing duty, his first, wildly inappropriate reaction, was to laugh. He stifled it with his fist, averting his eyes, and accepted the consoling shoulder-pats of his comrades as they filed out to their own, significantly less deadly, tasks.

He'd seen the Scorch in woodcuts, and on maps, of course; a neatly-hatched ribbon bisecting Ravka. The reality of it was beyond any imagining. It towered over the barren ground around Kribirsk like a permanent heat haze: a silent wall of searing, ever-shifting light stretching from horizon to horizon against the dark evening sky. Tongues of light curled and flickered outward periodically, like a fire licking at dry wood. Ripples and currents moved constantly within the curtain of radiance.

"Scary, innit?"

Aleksander turned to regard the speaker, a fellow trainee soldier whom he didn't recognize.

"It's certainly intimidating." Almost to himself, he mused, "imagine the power which must have been needed to create it."

The other man shuddered. "We'd all be better off if they kept their 'power' to themselves."

"Without the Second Army, no one would make it across in one piece," he pointed out, unsure if the Grisha had keener hearing than mere mortals. As if sensing this thought, one of the Grisha in Etherealki blue turned to look at him. She was pretty in the slightly-otherworldly way all Grisha seemed to be, with tan skin that spoke of Suli heritage. At his scrutiny, she winked.

"Without the Grisha there'd be no Scorch to begin with," his companion scoffed, turning away to head up the ramp. "Curse them, and curse the Lightbringer for inflicting this on us."

No one truly knew how the Scorch had come about, of course, but the one fact on which all agreed was that the Lightbringer—some distant ancestor of the current Sun General—created it. Commonly-held belief was that she'd done it to force the creation of the Second Army, by making Grisha indispensable. Otkazat'sya who crossed the Scorch too often found their hair brittled and their eyes sunk: only the first signs of a progressive and unstoppable sickness. Grisha, for whatever reason, were more resilient to its ravages.

Looking at the Grisha overseeing the loading of the skiff, this reasoning seemed weak to him. Why spit in the face of the Making itself, if all you were going to bargain for it was the limited freedom of servitude? If Aleksander had the money or connections for a different career, he wouldn't have chosen the military life. He'd been good at instructing the younger children; perhaps he could have sought employment as a tutor.

While it was a known 'fact' that the Scorch was haunted by the spirits of those lost within its borders, Aleksander really hadn't been prepared for the noises emanating from the swirling mass of light. They reached even into the hull of the skiff, where he watched the journey through the smoked-glass windows. Within, the grasshopper chirp of the radiation meter whirred, indifferent to the danger it notified. Above, the more hardy Grisha used their powers to convey the skiff along the sand, following the trail of poles which marked the way. Replacing the way points as the metal corroded and disintigrated was a constant and necessary task. The glare rendered any visual navigation impossible, and compasses were of no use at all, spinning every which way at random.

"Fifth marker!" the navigator called, and then not long after, "Solar storm incoming! Batten down!"

There was a rumbling sound, and then the world dissolved into nonsensical snatches of sensation. Being flung sideways as the skiff overturned, crates crashing into smithereens, dashing his head hard against the ribs of the craft. A creaking, screeching noise as the hull tore; bright, searing daylight flooding the inside. Screams. Blood. His own? His hand came back smeared from a probing touch. The acrid taste of bile as he emptied his stomach, hunched over at the sight of the soldier from earlier smeared in parts across the silver sand. A ringing in his ears. His skin, stretched tight across his clenched fists, smarting like he'd spent all afternoon in the sun.

"—stand?"

A face blurred in and out of his vision, dark goggles against tanned skin and brown curls.

"Can you stand?" she repeated, and he nodded, let himself be dragged numbly to his feet.

The survivors of the crash—pitifully few, and all but two in jeweled coats rather than drab olive—gathered. One in Corporalki red made her way through the bodies, shaking her head at each.

"We need to head back," the Squaller said. "Kribirsk is closer."

"We'll never make it on foot."

"Well we can't stay here!"

Aleksander closed his eyes against the violent brightness, and let the conversation drift over his head until the hand on his arm tugged him into a sluggish march through the loose drifts of sand.

Barely ten minutes in, the only other First Army soldier to survive the crash dropped to her knees, convulsing and vomiting blood. Aleksander dropped to his knees next to her, fumbling for his water canteen from his belt with blistered fingers. A strong arm pulled him back to his feet.

"There's no point," the Heartrender told him. "We have to keep moving."

Aleksander couldn't tear his gaze away from her anguished writhing—was physically unable to force it anywhere else—until the Heartrender sighed and reached out with crooked fingers. The soldier let out a soft exhale, and stilled.

"That's all we can do for her," she said, resting a hand gently on Aleksander's shoulder. "Come on, now."

But hours in, they were all starting to flag. The heat was searing, the footing treacherous. His vision swam, light dancing around the edges. And then the otherworldly shriek started back up.

"Fuck!" One of the Grisha in purple lifted a pair of smoked-glass binoculars to his eyes. "Another storm incoming. Three, no, two clicks out, heading this way."

It had been a frequent joke at Keramzin that Aleksander attracted bad luck like others attracted midges in summer. Had he doomed this entire crossing, just by coming along? Was this really how he was going to die: torn to shreds by a storm of sunlight in the saints-forsaken Scorch? His eyes were too parched and sun-dazzled even to cry.

The Squaller was drawing currents of wind around them, but the look on her face made it very clear how much she expected that to do against the storm. Just as she moved her arms in a great sweep to send the wind skyward, a lash of solar fire flicked towards them. She stumbled backward, kefta marred by a nasty burn that showed the skin beneath bubbling.

"No!"

Aleksander reached out to her, their last hope. From his open palm poured forth a torrent of darkness.

He stared around them, blankly uncomprehending, as the shadows swirled into a protective bubble that held the fury of the Scorch at bay. It was blessedly cool, within their impenetrable shade.

And then he passed out.

The quiet murmur of voices pulled him back from the darkness. Intense disorientation seized him, and he opened his eyes to a face mere inches from his own.

The woman paused, hands held near to his face. Her cuffs were red like the Heartrender, but embroidered with gray. A Healer.

"Sorry," she smiled, gesturing towards his cheeks. "I was just about to—"

He brought his fingertips to his face, which was peeling and blistered. It stung to touch.

"We made it back to Kribirsk?" His voice conveyed his confusion. He frowned, trying to remember. They'd been in the storm, and then...?

"You saved everyone who made it back, they're saying." The Healer's eyes were soft. "You brought them home."

"I..."

The Heartrender poked her head into the tent, and looked to the Healer. She ran her fingers just above his cheekbones, which tingled as the burns receded.

"He'll do for now. I'd like to check him over again later."

The Heartrender nodded, and turned to Aleksander. "Come on then. The General wants to see you."

He trailed in the woman's wake to the central tent in the Grisha encampment, a gigantic white construction with gold detailing. Within, the meeting which had been ongoing stopped at his entry. In the middle, behind the desk—saints, that was the Sun General herself.

Despite being the shortest person in the room by at least a head, there was no question who was in charge here. She held herself like a Queen, clad in a gold, heavily embroidered kefta which shone beneath the lamplight. Had he not known she was over a hundred years old, he would never have guessed. While her hair was pure white, it was lustrous, not the brittle grey of age. It was pulled up on her head in a tight, complex braided arrangement, leaving the smooth, pale skin of her neck bared. A high, ornate collar rose behind it like the sun.

Her dark eyes bore into him, their gaze assessing.

"This is him?" she asked, eyes not leaving him for a moment.

"This is him," the Heartrender confirmed.

"Your name?" she directed to him.

"Aleksander. Kirigan."

One perfect brow arched. "You're late, Aleksander Kirigan."

"I—Sorry? I only just woke up," he stammered. "Your Heartrender brought me straight here."

She was smiling, like it was a joke. "Four hundred years late, I mean."

Small chuckles spread around the room, and Aleksander floundered on the rocks of the conversation. "For... what? Why am I here?"

The Sun General stepped up close to him, and tugged one of his hands forward between them, palm up. She frowned, for a second, and then the expression was gone, smoothed away. She ran a thumb over his skin.

"You summoned shadows, in the Scorch. Can you show me?"

He looked down at their joined hands. That hadn't been a sun-induced hallucination, then. "I don't know how I did it."

Quick as a flash, she raised her other hand, wreathed in blinding light. He brought his free hand up to shield his eyes, and startled. A shield of shadow hovered above his palm, extending into the air. He turned his hand over, gawking at it. A murmur spread around the room.

The General still hadn't dropped his other hand. This close to him, he had to duck his head to meet her gaze as she looked up. It was uncomfortably intimate. A smile curled across her ageless features.

"I've been waiting a long time for you, Aleksander. You and I are going to change the world."

Chapter Text

Nadezhda marched across the Palace Grounds so quickly that her guards struggled to keep up, newfound knowledge burning in her chest all the way to the Darkling's office in the Little Palace. The man himself looked up at her entrance, a welcoming smile briefly crinkling his eyes before he registered the expression on her face. He motioned to his oprichniki and her guards to leave them, and came around to the front of his desk.

"What's wrong?" he asked once the door was closed behind them, resting hands on her shoulders. "Are you alright?"

She clenched her fists at her side, forcing the question out. "Are you my father?"

He stilled, and her stomach lurched. Part of her had been sure he'd react with baffled confusion. Instead, he met her gaze.

"I am," he confirmed, his voice unbearably soft.

"I can't believe you!" she exploded, making to hit him. He intercepted her hand, holding her wrist away from himself but exerting no pressure. She felt the familiar comforting thrum of his amplification, that shared familial trait, and it only fueled her rage. "How could you do that to Papa? I thought you were his friend! You—"

"Nad'ka," he interrupted, gently, "your father knows. He's known from the beginning. Before you were even born."

That took the wind out of her sails. She sagged against his grip, and he released her. He guided her towards a chair, and then perched on the edge of his desk.

"I don't understand," she said.

"Your mother and I..." he started, hands now pressed loosely together in his lap, "we were together, before she ever met your father."

"Oh." The thought was startling. "Did you love her?"

He smiled, and it reached all the way to his eyes. "I did. I still do."

The new information wrong-footed her, contradicting her initial assumption but failing to really explain anything. "If you loved her, why did you let her marry Papa?"

That got a snort out of him. "I'd like to see anyone 'let' your mother do anything. She didn't know she was pregnant with you when she accepted Nikolai's proposal, and we were... at odds, at the time." He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, as if deciding what to say next. "By the time you were born we'd reconciled, but Ravka needed stability, and a marriage to the Sun Saint helped your father provide that. Backing out would have caused more harm than good, by that point. And you were a sun summoner, so... we decided between us that it was best if Nikolai claimed you as his own, and legitimized you so that you might one day claim the throne yourself."

Her parents had always seemed like such an ideal match; the idea they might be merely going through the motions of a political arrangement was upsetting. "So she doesn't love him?"

"She does, and he loves her. Their marriage is real... as is their love for you. I didn't mean to imply otherwise."

The fight had finally left her, leaving an aching sort of sadness in its wake. He seemed to be feeling it too, a brittle smile on his face.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"We couldn't have done so until you were old enough to understand the need for secrecy. Perhaps we left it longer than we should. I'm sorry." His eyes were soft. "It was never our intent to hurt you."

This whole conversation had gone so differently to how she'd imagined. "But... didn't it hurt you? Letting me think Papa is my father? Not being able to tell me the truth?"

"He is your father," he disagreed. "He raised you as his own, he loves you like his own. But... yes, it's been difficult, sometimes. To watch you grow up, and not have the relationship with you I might have wished for."

She rose and flung herself into his arms and buried her face in his chest. His arms wrapped around her, the buckles of his kefta digging into her front uncomfortably, holding tight. She felt his chin rest on the top of her head, and the steady pulse of his heart beneath her ear. One hand stroked her hair, soothing.

Eventually she disentangled herself, sniffing, and he produced a (predictably black) handkerchief from one of his many ridiculous pockets to pass to her with a smile. She dabbed at her face.

"Does this mean I should call you 'dad', when we're alone?"

A pained look crossed his face before his usual expression reasserted itself. "I would like nothing more, but it's unwise to get into the habit. It is... difficult, to maintain separation between public and private versions of yourself that way. I would not burden you with it."

"It feels strange to keep calling you 'Uncle Sasha' now I know."

His lip twitched with amusement. "You are Grisha, of age to have started your lessons at the Little Palace. Technically you should call me moi soverenyi'."

She wrinkled her nose at him, and he laughed. And then another thought occurred to her.

"Does this mean Baghra is my grandmother?"

"What—" She'd managed to shock him again, his reaction unfiltered.

"She's an amplifier too," Nadezhda pointed out, rolling her eyes. "I'm not stupid."

He laughed, eyes alight with what she suspected was pride. "No, solnishka, you certainly are not." Then he tugged her in for another hug, ruffling her hair in a way that made her protest and bat his hands away.

Alina reached out to Aleksander down the tether. 'Is Nadya with you? Valentina said she was seen heading to the Little Palace like a thunderstorm.'

'She just left,' came back, and then, in a way which could only be referring to one thing, 'She knows.'

That surprised her. 'You told her?'

'She worked it out.' A flash of smugness. 'She's smart.'

Alina winced. 'Is she angry?'

'A little. She was furious initially, when she thought it was a betrayal of Niko; less so after I corrected her and explained why we kept it from her. She understands, I think, but it will probably take time to truly come to terms with it. She asked if she could come back to talk again later.'

She sent an acknowledgement, and then, cheekily, 'We should probably draw lots to work out who has to eventually tell her that you're the Black Heretic.'

A wave of exasperation came back, and she laughed.

'Make Niko do it,' he sent, wry, then closed the link.

Chapter Text

Aleksander tipped his head back, as he let the unpredictable, pinprick sensation of Nikolai's claw tips spark flashes of anticipation through him. The deeper pain-pleasure of the slice of claws here and there tightened his arousal like a bowstring, Nikolai's tongue darting out to taste and soothe in their wake. They didn't let the demon out to play like this often; those sharp teeth and talons closed off more avenues for pleasure than they opened up. But there was something intoxicating about seeing his own power so deeply woven into Nikolai's being. It stoked something primal within him; something prideful and possessive. Though he knew that the demon belonged to Nikolai as much as to him. One more thing they'd made between them, to produce a whole greater and more harmonious than its disparate parts would suggest.

Eventually he tired of the teasing and build-up and pushed Nikolai over onto his back. The demon's wings hung over the edge of even the king's ludicrously proportioned bed, an inky expanse of shadow. Nikolai's pitch black eyes watched hungrily as Aleksander used his own blunter fingers to open himself up, then to smooth more of the lubricant over the shadow-tipped head of Nikolai's cock before turning round to position himself. Nikolai might be firmly convinced that the version of Aleksander who forced this form on him had done so purely out of spite, but it was hard to believe, as the shadow ridging on said cock dragged gasping moans from him as he lowered himself onto it, that there had been no other motivations at work.

It was admittedly more likely a happy accident, though, given how little attention he'd paid to Nikolai before his return. Aleksander had dutifully turned out at the summons from the palace when Nikolai was born, to make appropriately positive comments about the newest Lantsov squirming restlessly in his mother's arms, and then hadn't thought about the boy again at all until he'd heard in passing that he'd left for basic training. The fact that it had been fifteen years already had been almost as surprising to him as the fact that Nikolai had signed up to serve as infantry. It was so easy to lose track of time, when you had so very much of it to spend.

Nikolai returned from his service subdued as most people were by their first taste of war, and itching to leave for pastures new. But then he didn't leave, and even through the elation and distraction of having found a sun summoner at long last, it had been impossible for Aleksander not to notice the change in him. Impossible not to be drawn to him, impossible to resist his dogged—ha—overtures of friendship. Their conversations had revealed a steady maturity that belied his years, and a deep mastery of military strategy, politics, and more. Aleksander had been forced to accept that he had very badly misjudged and underestimated Nikolai Lantsov.

...It had been a significant relief to his ego, when Nikolai had finally come clean about everything, to know that his judgement hadn't been faulty at all. It had been quite literally a different man that returned from Kribirsk, one heartbeat to the next separated by a discontinuity of centuries. A relief, too, to know that the old soul he sometimes thought he glimpsed when Nikolai let the mask slip wasn't just wishful thinking on his part, spurred by his own loneliness and desperation for company.

"You're woolgathering," Nikolai murmured against his neck, his usually crisp diction slightly muddied by the fangs. "Where did you go, lovely?"

Aleksander blinked the reminisce away, realizing that he'd devolved to little grinding motions in his distraction. He leaned back into Nikolai, gaze shifting to the shadowed edge of one wing visible in his peripheral vision. "I should probably wish that none of this ever happened to you."

Nikolai hummed against his skin, non-committal.

"If I was a better man, I would. I never was any good at selflessness, though." How could he have been, with Baghra as his example?

"Agree to disagree," Nikolai said, tone light but brooking no argument. He persisted in believing in a better nature that Aleksander knew himself not to possess, in defiance of all he'd apparently seen; in defiance of everything Nikolai had suffered at the hands of alternate versions of himself. Nikolai paused for a long moment, one hand resting lightly on Aleksander's thigh, the other pressed warm against his midriff. Shadows leaked from his splayed fingers into the pale skin beneath them. "And everything that happened led me here, so I can't say I regret it either."

Aleksander twisted to pull him into a close-mouthed kiss, careful of the fangs, one hand on the back of his neck. Then he let go and lifted himself up on his knees, sinking back down in a way that pulled stifled noises from them both.

"Though it is a crying shame that we spent so long murdering one another," Nikolai laughed between soft moans and rolls of his hips, "When we could have been doing this from the start."

He encouraged him back into a driving pace with hands on his hips. Aleksander moved with him, the physical sensations melding seamlessly with the pulse of his own power pressed into him and against him, surrounding them both as Nikolai's wings wrapped in close. He came to the feeling of Nikolai sinking teeth into his neck as he shuddered through his own climax. He lapped at the wound as they both came down.

"I mean it," Nikolai said, once he'd finished, chest still pressed to Aleksander's back, the steady beat of his heart thudding through them both. "Maybe we were meant to be enemies. Maybe this is the only timeline where we end up here, the only one where we make this work. But I wouldn't change a thing."

Aleksander let a smile unfurl. "Nor would I."

Chapter Text

"I sought you out to offer my professional services, actually."

"What makes you think I need the services of a sea captain?"

"I'm sure you can see the utility of a well-placed privateer. Someone to gather information, and act as your agent. I guarantee, you won't find a better man for the job."

"I'd require a lot of trust in that privateer," Nikolai countered. "And, you'll forgive my bluntness, purchased loyalty isn't worth the paper it's written on. You can always be outbid."

The privateer nodded, as if he'd expected this. "You'd need someone you can trust implicitly. And the only person you could really trust so deeply is yourself. Well, you're in luck."

"I'm sorry?"

Sturmhond lifted a chain from around his neck, and un-threaded something from it to toss over. Nikolai caught the hefty gold ring automatically, bringing it up to examine. And went cold as he recognized it. The Tsar's coronation ring, which he'd last seen around his father's finger. Those gemstones could be nothing else.

"Where did you get this?"

"It was given to me--somewhat reluctantly, I'll admit--for my coronation. Seven years from now, from your perspective. Eight years ago, from mine."

"You-- you're claiming to be from the future?" When Sturmhond only nodded, Nikolai let out an exhale that was almost a laugh. "This is an extraordinary claim, you understand. It's going to need frankly extraordinary evidence. You could have taken this ring from my father. Not easily, I'll grant, but it's still more likely than the idea of navigating time in the wrong direction."

"I'd have the exact same doubts, in your position." Sturmhond clenched his hand around the chain he'd taken off, and then laid that down on the table, rather more gently than he'd handled the ring. It was a set of dog tags, and Nikolai knew before he'd even turned them over what name he'd see there. He fished the set he wore around his own neck from inside his shirt, and looked down dumbfounded at them together. Sturmhond's was patinated and well-worn from handling, but it had the exact same notch. He ran his finger over the letters of Dominik Vertov engraved into the metal, and then scooped them up to pass back over. The chain swiftly looped back around Sturmhond's neck, and was tucked back into his shirt. Nikolai caught a brief flash of a nasty scar on his chest. Was it better to ask, or not to know?

"Saints. I suppose I have no choice but to believe you." He sat for a moment longer, the revelation swirling through his brain. The older Nikolai--no, that was awkward; Nikolai resolved to keep referring to the man as 'Sturmhond', if for no other reason than to keep some mental distance between them. Sturmhond patiently waited him out, and eventually he managed to put together a question. "If you're me, that means... I'll be you, eventually?"

Sturmhond grimaced. "I was you, but if we're all the product of our experiences, as the philosophers would have us believe... then saints willing, you'll never be me. The whole point of Alina sending me back was to change things, and I'm going to do everything in my power to prevent your life from going the same way mine did."

"What's with the--" Nikolai gestured at his own face in demonstration. "You'd presumably look older than me, there's surely no worry about being recognized?"

"Permanent tailoring. I had it done years ago, it wasn't for this specifically."

"I didn't realize tailoring could be made permanent."

"It can't. Saints willing, it won't ever become possible again. The usefulness isn't worth the circumstances which brought it about."

Chapter Text

Aleksander did not routinely keep a diary, a habit which had been ingrained in him by centuries of secrecy. Ivan maintained his daybook of appointments, which was merely a dry outlining of times and locations. If he ever added his own commentary to this, though, any entry from the past three weeks might look something like this:

06:30: Wake from brief doze in the hideous guest suite. Change to fresh clothes, check appearance in mirror to ensure tailoring is still in place.

07:00: Breakfast in Nikolai's rooms. Go over what Nikolai should work on today. Short session of fine control practice.

08:30: Head for the Little Palace, paperwork secured in a brown leather satchel appropriate for the vagrant student persona. Summon Genya. Change clothes. Return to own face with relief once Genya arrives.

09:30: Hole up in study with Ivan for the morning brief. Two more squallers injured badly enough on a Fold crossing that they'll be out of comission for weeks. Count Petrov is suspected of corresponding with sympathisers of the West Ravkan Independence Movement. One to keep an eye on; plant a spy in his staff if possible.

10:15: Reply to correspondence. Several key supplies running low due to failed Fold crossings; authorise release of extra funds to purchase more from local merchants if necessary.

12:00: Summon Genya for re-tailoring. Ignore pointed question about whether it's really worth doing when it will only need to come off again in an hour. Of course it is: Nikolai's friend would obviously take lunch with him, and the entire point of this venture is pretending to be Nikolai's friend. Ignore the even more pointed facial expression this statement provokes. Accept compromise of 'just today, then'.

13:30: Return, change, tailoring. Wave away suggestion that perhaps taking the morning brief in the student guise would be sensible, since only Ivan is present for it, thus cutting two tailoring sessions out of each day. Unacceptable. What if someone came in, or an emergency required going somewhere else? Also, Ivan would definitely be laughing inside at the goatee the whole time.

14:00: Read through the Fabrikators' latest update on the amplifier work. Thus far not much progress in Arkesk. Frustrating. Idly wonder whether Ilya himself might still be lurking around somewhere causing trouble. Ask mother, perhaps? Probably inadvisable.

14:30: Meet with Botkin for an update on the current batch of upper-year students. Good progress overall, but still concerns about some of them.

15:00: Head from there to Baghra for the same. Good progress on that front too, reading between the lines of scathing criticism. If Baghra is truly unsatisfied with a student she simply refuses to teach them further. Accept a cup of bitterly herbal tea. Evade one shin-swipe, suffer two more in retaliation. Submit to intense scrutiny with as inscrutable a face as possible. She knows something's up. Refuse to give her the satisfaction of telling her. If she wants to know things she can leave her damn hut for once and ask around. Time for another purge-via-reassignment-to-Ulensk of her agents within the Little Palace soon.

16:00: Weekly meeting with the Heads of the Orders. David is excited about the upcoming skiff launch, already full of improvement ideas for the next iteration. Glad to see the time Nikolai has been spending with him hasn't completely distracted him from his actual job. It's good that they're getting on. Slight danger they may manage to blow up parts of the Little Palace together, of course, but the potential gains outweigh the risks.

18:00: Release everyone else down to the dining room. Briefly consider going along with them and claiming 'research' overran. Tempting as the idea is, snubbing dinner with the Royal Family is unwise. Change, tailoring, and head back with new papers in the satchel. Back at the guest suite, bathe and then change clothes again, this time to evening wear suitable for dining with the Tsar.

20:30: Dinner. At least this is only a 'family' dinner and not a State Banquet. Are there are any upcoming banquets at which 'General Kirigan' would be expected to make an appearance? Need to work out a suitable military emergency to fabricate if so. Deflect stupid questions about Kerch from Tatiana. Deflect stupider questions about the Little Palace from Vasily. Let Nikolai steer the conversation away, effortlessly charming. The Lantsov cream-and-blue getup is hideous, but Nikolai wears it well.

21:30: After-dinner port. Make excuses to leave early by pleading headache, inviting mockery from Vasily. Vividly imagine plucking Vasily's eyeballs from their sockets. Head back to guest suite.

22:30: Answer knock on door and let Nikolai in. Accept suggestion of a nightcap to end the day on a less Vasily-tainted note. Pour measures of brandy (disgusting--why does Niko like it? Resolve to start stocking brandy in own rooms back at the Little Palace). Listen to Nikolai rant on the topic of brothers. Dodge questions on own family. What relations is this identity meant to have again? Can't remember; it's been so long since anyone asked. Probably shouldn't have mentioned Ulla the other day, even with so little detail. Wonder how many other half-siblings are still out there, unknown and unaccounted for. Lament once again being the son of Baghra Morozova. Other mothers wouldn't refuse out of principle to live in the literal palace their son built for them. Other mothers also wouldn't burn down entire villages for their son, though.

????: Begrudgingly agree with Nikolai's assessment that he should probably leave because it is very, very late.

Dawn(ish): Wake with dry mouth and eyes. Nikolai apparently never made it to his own room last night, since he's sprawled fast asleep on top of the bed, still fully-dressed. Sleeping in the armchair was a poor choice. Shy away from considering other choices of sleeping location which might have been available.

Chapter Text

The plug was absolutely in the top ten of ideas he'd ever had, Nikolai congratulated himself; well worth the slight embarrassment of explaining to the Durasts what he wanted. The face Aleksander had made when he undressed him and found the smooth steel base of it keeping him stretched and ready would live in his memories for a long time, as would the absolutely phenomenal railing which had followed it. Aleksander had bent him almost in half with his knees up by his ears; he'd had to reach his hands up to grab onto the edge of the mattress for dear life, breath knocked out of him with every thrust. Already wound tight by the plug shifting inside him through the day, it only took a handful of strokes of his cock to tip him into an explosive orgasm. Aleksander followed not long after with a hoarse groan, hips pressed hard against him as he spilled deep inside him.

"I can't stay," Nikolai said breathlessly. He felt utterly wrecked, chest flushed with exertion and striped with his own spend. "I've a meeting with the Kerch representatives soon."

"And you came here to have all thoughts forcibly ejected from your head, to survive the tedium?" Aleksander asked, lip quirking.

"Exactly."

"I have a better idea," Aleksander hummed, a spark of mischief in his gaze. He reached over for the discarded plug and eased it back inside. Nikolai shuddered slightly, still over-sensitive.

"Well, now I'm definitely not going to be thinking about export tariffs," he gasped. "Fuck."

Chapter Text

"You're a prince, a pirate and a prodigy? What aren't you good at?" Mal sounded vaguely disgusted.

Nikolai flashed him a look. "I'm told my poetry is awful, and I was summarily banned from partaking in any cooking after my first attempt at it in the army."

Mal shook his head, pushing a snow-laden branch aside to duck under it. "Those aren't weaknesses, they're just anecdotes to make you look approachable. There's nothing real about you, is there?"

"Alright then," he retorted cheerfully, as he trod in Mal's boot prints through the deep snow. "I'm awful at languages. It took me even longer to learn Kerch than it took Vasily, despite being significantly more intelligent than he was, and I still didn't really reach fluency until I lived there." He paused briefly to navigate over a fallen log, thinking. "I'm terrified of being alone. I do worry that there's no real self left under all the layers of performance I've been putting on since I was nine. That even if I could stop pretending, I wouldn't be able to do it."

Mal was staring at him now, but Nikolai was warming up to the topic. It was fun, to really let loose with someone whose opinion of him ultimately didn't matter; Mal was professional enough to do his job regardless. He kept going. "I found my soulmate too soon--or too late, I suppose, depending on how you want to look at it. I'm going to try to fix things though, after this."

Mal barked a laugh, startled and bemused. "...That was maybe too far in the other direction."

Nikolai clapped him on the back, the snow encrusted on his jacket crunching slightly under the touch. "You asked."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry I did," Mal snorted. And then after a moment, "I hope you sort your thing out."

"I'm sure I will, assuming that he's still alive. The whole thing becomes rather moot if all we find is his body, at the end of all this."

Mal stopped walking. "I thought we were looking for the Darkling."

Nikolai hummed cheerfully. "We are."

"Saints." Mal shook his head as he picked up the pace again, this time in disbelief. "You're a braver man than me, Lantsov."

"I wouldn't take it personally. Most people could say the same."

Consciousness returned to Aleksander in sluggish waves, rising and ebbing. Physical sensations filtered in, piecemeal. Relentless, throbbing pain in his neck where the bullet had clipped him. Fire lancing along bruised ribs with every shallow breath. Corecloth might deflect bullets, but the impact still hurt. A tongue that felt like cotton in his mouth. His arms were wrenched awkwardly behind his back, steel chafing at his wrists where a bar kept them apart to stop him summoning. His captors had been prepared for Grisha: a planned ambush then, not an unlucky coincidence. He could kill them easily even while bound, but he had no idea where he was, or how long it had been since his capture. No idea who had orchestrated this, or where he was being taken. It was better to wait and to see what intel he might be able to glean from his captors, first.

He strained his ears, listening. The slow creak and rumble of a wooden cart, the faint jangle of harnesses, and the even crunch of two sets of hooves on trampled-down snow. Two low voices, ahead, murmuring in Fjerdan. Complaints about the cold, and the long trip. To where? He risked cracking one eye, wincing at the feeling of daylight lancing into his retinas. He was alone; hopefully that meant that the others had escaped, rather than that they were all dead. His cheek was numb where it pressed against cold, hard wood beneath him, and peeled away tackily when he rolled laboriously onto his back. His stomach rebelled against the motion, forcing him to exhale steadily through his nose until the nausea receded. Definitely better to wait to make a move, until he felt less like he might pass out again just from moving.

Chapter Text

Morning dawned overcast and chilly. Mood in the makeshift camp was subdued, as people piled back into the flyers and the Squallers took them up into the cloud layer. Fine mist soaked through every inch of fabric, driving the chill through clothes. And then they broke through the cloud layer, and Nikolai's breath escaped him in a rush. From above, the clouds stretched thick from horizon to horizon, smooth and rugged in turns almost like the sea ice on the Bone Road.

He'd taken the Volkvolny up into the northern reaches of it one winter, the Tidemakers on his crew forging a path through the ice to escape Fjerdan navy ships pursuing them. Even with the threat of pursuit and the risk of getting trapped, he'd marveled then at the beauty of the frozen seascape. The sunlight had bounced back blindingly from the endless sheets, their monotony broken up by jagged edges where the ice had crashed into itself and refrozen in abstract patterns. Nikolai had thought then that nothing else could ever make him feel so insignificant as that harsh, indifferent display of the raw power the sea. But the vastness of sky stretched above and around and below them was coming close.

Nestled in the midst of the sea ice they'd passed the ghostly white form of a whaler, rime-encrusted and abandoned, its crew long since dead and gone--or perhaps still there, frozen, within its belly. They hadn't approached to see. As morning progressed to midday, and the mountains loomed ever-closer, the outline of the old monastery emerged from the mists like an echo of the whaler, the observatory spire reaching upward from it like the main mast of a ship.