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And in the dark, I can hear your heartbeat
I tried to find the sound
But then it stopped, and I was in the darkness
So darkness I became
Florence and the Machine – Cosmic Love
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Righteous anger feeds him for the first century, after.
They call him The Black Heretic, they call him damned, and Aleksander does not even flinch. How can he, when the sound Luda made when they killed her drowns out all the rest? He wakes one morning and finds his mother has left him, and he cannot feel the wound of it, too consumed by planning his next act of vengeance.
His shadows whisper to him, seductive in the red din and there is war, and war, and war.
Vengeance, he comes to learn, is a cruel temptress; for every enemy of his and his people he strikes down, three more arise from their ashes. Grisha are hunted only more now, driven by the envy of their very natures, and the fear of the monster the Otkazat’sya whisper of, The Black Heretic. No foundation he tries to build to shelter them can hold, in the face of such fear and loathing.
Of course, they too whisper of other monsters.
The Fold – this gaping void of his wrath and pain made manifest - cares not who or what it slaughters. The monsters within – his monsters within - care not whom they savage.
Grisha and Otkazat’sya, Shu and Fjerdan bleed the same blood when the volcra find them.
And all of it is on his hands.
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These years are not easy to remember.
But he does.
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And anger? But, oh, anger is a fickle mistress.
One day, amongst the blood of dead Grisha, of his people, Aleksander finds the shield of his anger has fluttered away. Gutted, like the predawn candle, leaving him only in the smoke of his own desolation.
They’re all dead, the shadows whisper, all dead but you.
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His decades of bargaining are no easier a memory. If he has made The Fold then surely, he can unmake it, can he not? Can he not erase those creatures that he had made from the bones of his enemies and the shadows of his power?
The trying almost kills him.
The small science feeds us, his mother had said, the merzost feeds off us, and his mother never lies.
He does not stop. And yet the answer never changes.
He cannot.
It is here, in the darkest time, his mother returns to him.
“I cannot fix it,” Aleksander whispers to his mother, more so now her child than he’s ever been before, lost in the sea of his own despair. “They still hunt us, Grisha still die, and I cannot fix it.”
“No, you cannot,” his mother says, and the shadows in her eyes are not kind, but oh, they are knowing, “So you will have to wait for the one who can to come along.”
Aleksander knows his mother never speaks the name of her sister she killed in childish envy. Not even he, the nephew she never got to meet, knows it.
She speaks only slightly more of the father who had broken the laws of nature to resurrect her and been drowned for it. The father obsessed with the powers of the Grisha he’d seen, and the powers that could yet be.
The Sun Summoner.
The light to his darkness, the day to his night. Someone to find him in this world, to never leave him to face it alone, again.
“What if they never come?” Aleksander finds himself asking his mother, the words weak and small, and he hates them for the fearful thing they reveal himself to be.
Baghra raised him to be many things; weak, was never one of them.
“They will,” Baghra says, and nothing more, the truth her most efficient weapon. “Now, to the problem at hand” she continues, brutally practical, and standing above him she offers him her hand, and an inquiring look, “and what you are going to do about it until they do?”
Centuries ago, before, his mother had told him, leave, be scarce, bide your time. Take a noblemen’s name and return when the time was right.
Aleksander had not listened to her then.
That his mother is powerful and no one, not even Aleksander, would cross her lightly is a fact. And yet, when faced with the knowledge that her sons’ power far eclipsed even hers, Baghra had never looked upon him in envy.
This is the kind of power that shapes futures, his mother had told him as a small boy, hidden from those who had feared them for that very fact. I will teach you how to wield it. But only you must decide how to use it. And only you must bear the burden of it.
It remains the only time his mother has ever looked upon him with pity.
Saints, he is tired of this burden.
But he is the Black Heretic. He is the Shadow Summoner.
And it his burden only to bear.
He takes the offered hand.
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Aleksander waits.
He builds and waits. The Little Palace is erected stone by stone, with the Starless Saint overlooking it.
Time passes. He closes his mind to the seductive echo of the merzost, dedicates himself to the small science.
He plans and waits. The Little Palace is filled with Grisha; with their power, with their laughter, with their strength, and the Shadow Summoner watches over them.
Time passes. Wars begin, wars end. Begin again.
He pledges allegiance to King after King, The Darkling, and he waits.
Time passes. People are born, people die.
He has not been Aleksander for many, many years. Has not spoken the name for centuries, has not been that man for longer still.
And still, it is Aleksander who waits.
Time passes. Kingdoms rise, kingdoms fall.
He ensures Ravka remains.
He is Staski, he is Kiril, he is Anton, he is Eryk.
He is not Aleksander.
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In all the centuries they drift in and out of each other’s orbit, his mother never mentions but one truth. Baghra does not believe in wasting words, and this is of course, a thing they both know all too well.
The he had made monsters of not just his enemies but also the Grisha too slow to flee from his rage should not bother him more than that they had been made out of Otkazat’sya. That they had been friends, rather than enemies, to be sure. But the other?
Such a thing would not matter to a good man.
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It matters to him.
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He waits and he waits and he waits.
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He is Kirigan, when he stands on the docks to watch the new skiff the Fabrikators have toiled over venture into The Fold, designed with the sole purpose of outrunning the volcra, of bringing safe passage to their people.
It will not be fast enough.
His people will die - his Grisha, brought into his sanctuary to give them the strength to fight what threatens them – and they will die at his doing, and he cannot fix it.
This is his penance, and so General Kirigan stands on the dock, and waits.
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He is Kirigan on the dock.
He is Aleksander when he sees the Light.
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Alina Starkov. An orphan from Keramzim, a map maker in the first army. Dirt lines her face, blood stains her nails, and her eyes, oh her eyes look upon him with fear.
Alina Starkov. The Sun Summoner.
He might have thought, you do not look how I imagined you, but that would have been a lie.
He has been very careful not to imagine what this person he has been so long waiting for might be. Very careful not to hope more than he could bear to give.
Four hundred years is not so long a time when measured by eons, he knows this. Four hundred lonely years, however?
They have felt very long indeed.
Beautiful, he instead finds himself thinking, and the thought itself is strange enough to give him pause. He has not looked upon someone in many centuries and thought them first beautiful. People are fleeting – even the longest lived Grisha is but a footnote in the annals his life – to look upon them with beauty is to ensure only loss.
But not Alina Starkov, he thinks, suddenly dizzy with the wonder of it. Alina Starkov will not wither and die, will not bend to the ravages of time.
Not the Sun Summoner.
He hides his hands behind his back as he has his men direct her to his carriage, so no one can see them.
Any yet, they still tremble.
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His heart pounds. He can hear it in his ears, the fast rush of blood made hot by rage and fear. He has not called forth the Cut in some time, not felt the need for it.
One must never rely on their deadliest weapon so much that its blade dulls, after all.
Alina Starkov, the Sun Summoner looks upon him with the blood of the Fjerdan he had Cut down, only seconds before the man would have robbed her of her life and returned him to the alone and Saints, he is sick of the fear in her eyes.
“Would you prefer I’d used a sword?” He asks when she demands answers, hiding the defensiveness he feels away in control built brick by brick, eon by eon, the disappointment.
The she cannot look upon what he is without fear is a bitter pill.
He swallows it down.
“Is this what my life will be?” She asks, with eyes that know the weight of the answer, and he aches with a need to comfort her, an urge rusty from disuse.
He wishes for her, for perhaps even himself, that the answer was not yes.
“You’ll get used to it,” he says, and for all it is not a kindness it is at least neither a lie.
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Even through layers of cloth and wool, with every stride of the horse he feels every inch of her where she presses against him, his nerves like a living wire. Nature seeks balance, his mother told him, when he was just a boy set upon her knee, fire and water, wind and earth, light and dark.
He’d felt her terror in the Fjerdan ambush, her pain, from miles away. No scout nor signal had alerted him, beyond a knowing, a power older than even he, Light calling Shadow. There is something being born into the world here – a connection of power made flesh, so young it is barely into its infancy – but still, the potential of it steals his breath.
It shakes him, this thing he cannot name; annoys him he cannot make himself ask if she too feels it.
He has been an island unto himself for so long, he is barely sure he knows how to venture into a world where that is not so.
The wanting of it leaves him weak.
That he can no longer tell if the weakness shames him is too, its own revelation.
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At the Little Palace, he sees her more than he should, less than he wants to.
Kirigan is a man of many responsibilities, many to a king he does not respect; all to a cause, a people, he will not fail again.
He contents himself with stealing moments and has Genya watch over her for the rest. He’s fond of the Tailor, in so much as he allows himself to be fond of any of the Grisha who come here for shelter and power and purpose.
He would never call her a friend; The Darkling is not allowed the luxury of friends, but Genya has always been loyal, and in this nest of vipers that is the monarchy, loyalty is a valuable currency.
“Alina,” he entreats, at what would normally be the end of their exchange, the words escaping him before he can cut them off, draw them back into the safety of himself, “is she happy?”
Genya blinks at him, a flash of surprise before she tamps it down behind her expertly crafted mask, and he sighs internally despite himself. He has worked hard to strike balance in the skin of General Kirigan.
Kirigan is firm but not cruel, unyielding but not unwelcoming, powerful but not craven.
Kirigan does not ask if people are happy, like some addled youth, gone moon eyed at the first pretty girl who smiles at him.
And yet still … he does not call the words back, send her away with a waved hand. Still, he waits to hear the answer.
“She’s made friends here, and she smiles when she calls the light now,” Genya says slowly, searching his face – kept carefully blank – before she continues.
“She writes to a man,” and now she speaks slower still, picking her words with care - to manage him, he recognizes - the marks of some form of an allegiance to her new charge, “a solider in the First Army she grew up with in the orphanage. She cares a great deal for him, and he is … uneasy, around Grisha. He hasn’t written her back.”
His face when he waves Genya away is pleasant, but oh, the shadows swirl within him.
Eternity is a strange creature, Aleksander knows, and knows Alina does not, yet.
Perhaps it might do her good to live out a mortal life before she is plunged into an immortal one. Might shorten the gap in their lived experiences, in a way he cannot offer her.
To love someone and to lose them, and then to have to learn to live with that, to grow from it.
He will always be centuries older than she is, this not even he can change. But time – the kind of time that spans before them – is a great equalizer. One day she will look upon a past vaster than any mortal thing can claim, and only he knows then the age she will feel in her very bones still kept young.
It should not matter to him if Alina has a man she loves, waiting for her. Should not matter to him if Alina has made a friend in his loyal Tailor, should not matter if to him if she is happy.
He does not need Alina to do something so banal as like him for her to tear down The Fold and liberate them all from it; to be the Sun Summoner he has spent centuries waiting for.
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It should not matter.
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He holds his hand out to her in a field where he has spilt blood for her, and promises, with all that he is, “You are Grisha. You are not alone.”
She looks at him upon a white stead, looks at him and does not look away, and he find himself saying, “Please, call me Aleksander.”
She stands atop the lip of a fountain, tells him a tale of all his sins revealed and then smiles at him and he cannot help but tell her, “you and I are going to change the world.”
She finds him when he needs her, touches his hand, and the light springs around them, banishing the darkness of his anger, his pain, and returns to him his promise, “you’re are not alone.”
“I’ve waited a long time for you,” he whispers, flesh still tingling with the memory of her touch, and for the first time in centuries, he feels alive.
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It does.
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His mother finds him on the eve before the Fete, in the place he would least expect her, his own chambers. Baghra rarely leaves her caverns; he has offered her rooms in the Little Palace again and again, and her answer is always the same.
These walls belong to the King, boy. The Caverns belong to no man.
“You care for her,” she declares, with her trademark bluntness, and he must fight the urge to pull his shadows into himself, hide this truth from her. Aleksander knows his mother’s affection for him is a tangled thing, the Morozova legacy, more so than his grandfather’s Amplifiers could ever be.
“That is not a weakness,” he says, defensively, too far down this road to offer half-hearted falsehood denials, to fight the truth of it himself.
Caring for Alina is perhaps the strongest thing he has done in centuries.
“You will have to tell her the truth,” Baghra says only, and oh yes, honesty has always been her most brutal weapon.
“I will lose her,” he says, and that he is unsure if he first speaks of losing the Sun Summoner and his chance to finally rid the world of his greatest mistake or the woman is perhaps his greatest selfishness.
“Does anything you must keep in a cage to call yours truly belong?” his mother asks, watching him with eyes that don’t blink, not even for the shadows that play over her face.
The things she does not need to say – if you lie to her, you will lose her, if you force her, you will lose her, and with her likely lose yourself – speak the loudest.
Know that I love you, Baghra had told him once, eons ago, in the darkness only they share. Know that I fear it will not be enough.
Aleksander looks away first. With his mother, he always does.
“Tell her,” Baghra says, firmly, turning away, and yet her voice loses not an ounce of its power or finality, “Or I will.”
It is not an empty threat; Aleksander knows she will, if he does not.
And yet, it too is weightless, for they both know he will not let her.
It is still his burden to bear.
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The morning does not come easily to him. He slept restlessly, the weight of the day too heavy for pleasant dreams, and the chaos of the pre-Fete around the palace grates on his already taunt nerves.
Distracted, he hears the footsteps first, and calls Ivan for his kefta, unable to put off the day any longer.
He turns, expecting Ivan.
He blinks, at seeing Alina.
“You’re not Ivan,” he says, bemusedly, for only the selfish pleasure of seeing her lips smile at him.
Her grin shines like the sun she can call, and Aleksander bleeds and bleeds and bleeds, a thousand cuts of his own making.
She tells him that she is not afraid, that she feels that she belongs, of the hope he aches to offer his people, and Aleksander wants and wants and wants, with everything he is, everything he has been and will yet be.
“You mean a lot … to everyone,” he says, a coward, unable to look away from her and it is too much, and yet too little.
Her kiss is the greatest surprise of a very, very long life.
Her lips upon his are like … belonging. Like awakening from a long slumber, water after a drought, food after a famine, and Saints, does Aleksander crave a feast.
For a moment, he thinks of holding his tongue, of staying in this moment forever, the dawn before the dark.
Then the moment passes, and he does what he knows he must.
“Alina,” he says, and does not rest his forehead on hers like he yearns to, for it is something he does not deserve, “we need to talk.”
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He locks the doors, pulls the curtains. Draws his shadows close. He cannot have anyone disturb them here.
And then, when he can stall no longer … he tells her.
About the little boy raised in the woods, and the villagers who watched him with fear. About the young, prideful man who lent his power to a King, and damned a woman who loved him for it. About The Black Heretic, blind with rage and pain and ambition and power, who damned them all. About Aleksander, who tried and tried to fix it and could not, and so he worked to bring forth a better world where someone might be born safe enough to learn how to.
He tells her about him.
It tears at him to see that spark she had looked at him with dim. To see the shadows of his truth, his very self, sap out the light of her.
“My parents were killed in The Fold,” she says, so dully that he wants to weep, to prostrate himself at her feet, beg forgiveness he knows he does not deserve.
“I know,” Aleksander says, helplessly, for he knows a great deal about Alina.
Knowledge he’s secreted away in time he should have been looking to the war and cannot even pretend to be sorry for the trade of it. What she looks like afraid, what she sounds like joyous. That she prefers spiced wine to ale, and blue irises to white. That her hands feel like warm satin on his cheeks, and her lips feel like a home he has never known.
And now … what she looks like when her heart is broken.
“I am sorry,” he says, wretched in the knowledge that it is not enough.
She leaves without another word, and he can only let her go.
He draws his shadows closer, until even he cannot make out the lines of the furniture, the color of the ceiling. Until he can barely see the flesh of his own skin, stretched across bones of hands forever stained ethereally black with blood.
And stays, an old man in a young man’s disguise, alone, in the darkness of his own making.
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He is almost surprised to see her at the demonstration. He half figured she might have stollen a horse and would have been halfway to wherever her tracker was by now, and he had promised himself if she had he would not run to the stables for a horse of his own to follow.
Alina Starkov does not owe him affection, much less absolution. That she is here, standing with him, to show the world a new way forward out of the darkness is more than enough.
That it is less than he craves, when he sees her resplendent in his color, black adorned with the gold embossing of the sun, is a thought he forces from his mind, banishes to the shadows.
She is … lovely.
Then Alina calls forth the Light, and looks at him – only at him, in a room of the most powerful and influential people this age has to offer, declaring her a living Saint - and Aleksander can only look back at her, pinned to this moment, fixated.
He’s waited centuries for the Sun Summoner.
Standing in the glow of the very thing he has waited lifetimes for, he knows this is only a partial truth.
He had not been waiting just for the Sun Summoner.
He had also been waiting for Alina.
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The knock on the door pulls him from his brooding, and for all he would like to hide away, he is still a General, and the world and its responsibilities still beckon.
He opens the door, expecting Ivan.
He blinks, at seeing Alina.
“You’re not Ivan,” he says, dumbly, an unintentional parrot of a time that feels worlds away, then winces, at the reminder.
But instead of erupting with anger, she only quirks the tiniest of smiles at him, and returns, “You sound disappointed,” and Saints, it makes him hope.
“Mal wrote me a letter back,” She says blandly, and her dark eyes watch him impassively, “It was on my desk when I got back to my rooms.”
Her solider, Aleksander thinks, and makes himself unclench his hands. She is not his, he reminds himself, she owes him nothing.
“Ah,” Aleksander says, small and inadequate, but she does not move to fill his silence. It stretches between them, heavy but not uncomfortable, until he feels the need to fill it, because he feels he owes her the truth after the magnitude of his lies, “I don’t know what you want me to ask of you Alina.”
“War, to soldiers, is a small picture,” she says, a non sequitur, moving to his war table, her dark eyes taking it all in, and he wonders if she is back in a tent, in a time when only ink and not Light spilled upon her fingers, “You go where you’re told, and you don’t ask why. You take every day is it comes and don’t think of the next.”
She picks up a small figure of a First Army soldier as she turns back to him, “War to a general is not a small picture.”
That thread between them hums, and he knows suddenly she is nowhere but here.
“No,” he agrees, the heaviness of her stated truth his most familiar companion, “it is not.”
She nods, and still holding the small model of a solider between her fingers, tracing its edges slowly, continues, “Mal is a good man, and he loves me. But when he thinks of that love, at the end of the war, he sees a farm, with animals to hunt and children to raise. He doesn’t see a Sun Summoner,” she finishes, and carefully sets the model down, steps away from it, “he sees a small picture.”
She deserves a good man, he knows, and he was only ever taught to be great.
“There is beauty in the small picture,” he offers, and then with a self-deprecating shrug, hiding his ache away, for it was never a life Baghra offered to him, nor one he has contemplated himself, “Or so I am told.”
“Yes,” She agrees, her face still carefully bland. And then, far too placidly for the shock it is to his system, like a mule kick to the chest, that leaves him reeling and breathless, “We bring down The Fold. And then what happens?”
We bring down The Fold, she says, like it is simple, like it is foregone, his greatest sin only a memory.
Sankta Alina, they called her this evening, bathed in the glow of her Light, and in this moment, Aleksander can only declare himself her truest acolyte.
“Alina, I cannot tell the future -” he starts, equivocating, but she sees it for what it is, cuts him off. “I know,” she waves, almost impatiently, but her expression never changes from its enigmatic stillness, its intent purpose, “But tell me the big picture.”
And he finds he cannot refuse.
“West Ravka itches to declare Civil War,” he says, echoing his thoughts of their prior discussion once more, too weary for the burn of anger. Instead, he turns, spreading his hands on the edge of the table to stand over it all, surveying, as he answers her in the truest way he knows, “And given that the King is a charmless creatin, I have little faith in negotiation. Families will fight families, and the Fjerdan will hunt the Grisha only harder that they scent the weakness of a land divided.”
He cannot tell the future, but he has seen enough of the past to know the writing on the wall.
She comes to stand abreast him at the war table, appraises the bigger picture set out in front of them in models and miniatures, asks thoughtfully, “West Ravka will not cede when they see us bring down The Fold?”
“Power like that does not calm rulers who fear their thrones slipping from their fingers,” he says, and thinks, as always, of Luda, of the lessons he’s learned the hard way, “It only frightens them further.”
Alina takes a moment, digesting, before she nods sadly at him, “So. More war.”
“Yes, more war,” Aleksander sighs, and feels all at once the terrible weight of his age, before tamping it down, returning his attention to her to make his point in earnest, “But that is not your burden to bear.”
Because it is important that she know this; that despite her power, she still has a choice in what she does with it, in what she becomes with it.
It will only be her that has to live with that choice, after all.
“But it is yours?” Alina asks, a frown drawing lines into the skin of her forehead that beg for his fingers to smooth them out as she looks at him.
He tucks his treacherous hands into his pockets, tries to be a good man.
“I’ve chosen this burden,” he says simply, thinks of anger and bargaining and finally the heavy weight of the work of acceptance, and though it hurts his heart to say, offers, “You could have your small picture with your tracker. No one would think less of you for wanting it.”
“I would,” she says, and the honesty of her steals his very breath. “I love this thing I can do,” she tells him, holding the Sun in her hands, the sweetest secret she knows only he will understand, “it makes me feel alive.”
And then, as the Light splits into two globes orbiting one another, a secret still, but darker now, “But sometimes I dream of a massive horned stag, a crown of ivory hair, and power that would blind kings and beggars alike. Most of the time it frightens me, but sometimes … it doesn’t.”
Sometimes, I want it, her eyes say, her Light making stars in them, and oh, Aleksander knows that feeling only too well.
Sometimes, he still wants it too.
“This power we have, it comes with an obligation,” she says, bringing the orbs back into herself. And though there is a sadness in her tone, the darkness lifts, and her face offers only the acceptance of finality, “We are not people who have the luxury of small picture lives.”
There is a thing with wings growing within him, a lock filled finally with its key, a force he yearns so badly to embrace he can no longer fear the wanting.
And still, still, he tries to make sure she is sure, “Alina -”
“Do you promise not to lie to me anymore?” She cuts him off, and this at least he can answer, trying to put the weight of he feels into his voice, “Yes. I am so terribly sorry for it.”
“Thank you,” she says, with quiet warmth he basks in, before she continues, looking over the table again, “I still have so much I need to learn. Will you teach me the things I need to know for us to be equals?”
Like calls like, his mother told him, and oh, Aleksander has wanted nothing more so than this in eons.
“It will be a hard life,” he promises her, and takes a single step towards her, thinks of the things she yet does not know she even has to lose, chipped away by the relentless passage of time itself, “but yes, I will.”
“Deal,” she tells him, Alina Starkov who shines in the darkness, a promise stronger than steel, and Aleksander thinks again, you and I are going to change the world.
They have the time.
So, he stretches his hand out in the offering a handshake. If it is less than he wants, he shoves that part down, far down. This is more than he expected, more than he deserves.
But Alina, oh Alina Starkov, tucks instead her tongue between her teeth and asks, “Aren’t most proper deals sealed with a kiss?”
Clearly, she has a limitless ability to surprise him.
“Alina?” He asks, awed, unable to take that final step towards her on treacherous legs, too wary of misunderstanding, of losing what he has not yet even truly had.
It is she, then, who steps forward first. In the end, it was always going to be her, Alina the Bright, and what can he do but follow?
When she kisses him, it does not taste of absolution, for that is not hers to give.
It tastes of joy, of lust, of tart grapes from the ball. Of starlight, cool and lovely. Of the crisp sunlight of a fresh day, warm and sweet.
She tastes of Alina, underneath it all.
And Saints, he wants.
“Are you sure?” He asks, lifting her bodily to the table as her legs encircle his waist, a claim he wonders if she even knows is already made. Then she nods, the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, and Aleksander stops thinking at all.
He lays her out on the war table, scattering soldiers and kings and monsters alike to the floor, forgotten in the face of her.
And Aleksander feasts.
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That the knock on the door comes after they have both sated themselves is undeniably the favorable option, does not mean it is the pleasing one.
He contemplates, for one heady moment, telling whoever it is to please fuck right off, if you would, and sweep Alina up into his arms and make up for lost time.
He does not, regrettably – he is still a General, and this is still a war – but when he finally untangles himself from Alina and hears what Ivan has to stay, he cannot say he does not regret the missed opportunity.
“It finally was Ivan this time,” Alina says to his back as he turns slowly towards her again, a teasing laugh in her voice that dies when she sees the darkness of his news, “Tell me.”
“There was an attack. Genya is with the healers,” Aleksander says quietly, so very tired of this thing that is politics, that is war, “Marie is dead.”
“I was the target,” Alina says, an answer to a question that does not need to be voiced, and Aleksander only sighs, takes her hand and draws her into him in answer, “They have the perpetrator in custody.”
She feels solid against him, real, in the circle of his arms, and he wishes he never had to let go.
“I’m coming with you,” Alina says finally, to his collarbone, and he can no more stop the tide from coming in than he can resist laying a kiss on her brow.
“Alina – “, he sighs, hesitant, for he thinks having Alina Starkov look upon him with fear one more time might wound him in ways no volcra or Shu or Fjerdan has. “He has to die, for what he has done. You do not have to see that.”
“Yes, I do,” Alina insists, her hands a soft weight on his cheeks, acceptance in her eyes a balm to his very soul, “You’ve chosen this burden, and so have I, so now you must let me share it.”
She turns, begins to make her way to the door, then turns back, sensing he has not followed, enquires gently, “What?”
“I truly have waited a long time for you,” Aleksander says again, just looking upon the splendor of her. Prays that she can read between his lines, know the double meaning; not just of like waiting for like, but for a man waiting for a woman.
No, he is not alone anymore.
“I’m here now,” Alina replies, her smile of heady understanding, and her reaching hand beckons him, an offering he doubts even a Saint could reject.
He is sure the smile that creeps onto his face is blinding.
He takes her outstretched hand – light meeting dark, flesh meeting flesh - and they greet the future together.
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I took the stars from my eyes, and then I made a map
And knew that somehow I could find my way back
Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too
So I stayed in the darkness with you
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FIN
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