Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1. Contents

2. Mementoes (G)

• The day she left him, Alina left behind not one single scrap of her soul, only her carefully composed albums of their honeymoon.
• Alternate Universe - modern setting
• Rated G with discussion of mature themes
• posted originally here.

• Getting Alexander out of the stupid tree had taken decades; getting him to remember the man he had been might take decades more.
• Alternate Universe - canon-divergent, post-canon
• Rated G with discussion of mature themes
• Posted originally on Twitter as 'Zoya'.

Chapter Text

If anyone had ever thought to ask him when his wife had left him – not that anyone would have the temerity to do anything of the sort though perhaps someone should – Aleksander Morozov knows he wouldn’t have been able to give them an answer.

It haunts him, the not knowing.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t noticed when Alina had disappeared from his bed. More than that, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t noticed when he had started to be evicted from access to her thoughts, her concerns, her plans.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t noticed when her heart had shuttered itself to him — leaving him, bereft, on the other side of a translucent barrier he hadn’t seen her build.

No, he remembers, vividly, all of that.

What he can’t pin down is the exact date she’d left him behind, fly beyond what they could have been – for, being away, on an excruciatingly painful visitation to his mother at her provincial estate, he’d returned only to find the entirety of his wife’s things missing from the overly large and achingly empty house he’d once called home.

Every trace of her, he’d found, was gone.

Every tiny memento of Alina was missing and the house had echoed he’d found as he’d wandered aimlessly through it. For, leaving, Alina had taken everything she’d ever shared with him, every part of her that had once lingered there — all but the casual snaps she’d spent their honeymoon taking.

Those framed photos and carefully curated albums, those, she’d carefully left those behind.

Leaving them as his only memento of her. 

Chapter Text

The dark-haired man tucked into the curved arm of the sectional might be tall, might be handsome, Alina thinks, though it’s hard to tell as he cowers slightly even at her careful approach.

She sighs - sending Zoya to fetch him had been a mistake; she’s never been gentle with her toys.

Settling carefully at the other edge of the overly ornate piece of furniture, Alina keeps her hands carefully folded in her lap, tries not to appear too eager, and keeps her face and demeanour as calming and non-threatening as possible.

Takes a moment so she could gentle her voice.

There are small branches tangled in the waves of his dark hair, she notices, hair which, unsurprisingly, needs a good trim.

His eyes, dark as the depths of the fathomless seas, are wild, a world away from the confident gaze she remembers.

“Hello Sasha - it’s Alina,” she smiles carefully. “Do you know me?”

He barely manages to shake his head ‘no’ - she supposes it makes sense, for him to remember so little, to seem so changed. After all, it had taken them decades to get him out of that damn tree.

-

Draft posted originally on Twitter as 'Zoya'.