Nina Zenik (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ravkanwitch) wrote2023-11-05 02:12 pm
ravkanwitch) wrote2023-11-05 02:12 pm
[Prose: A chance meeting]
Lately, after her most recent conversation with Janet and Laertes, Nina has been on the lookout for The Darkling - even though Laertes even more recently gave her a firm but kind warning to not endanger herself. It's just that she's never talked to him before meeting him here, only seen him from a distance when they were evacuating Keramzin. When she sees him in the library, she doesn't turn away. She pauses at the door instead.
A moment of bravery takes over. "I know who you are," she says. She's tamed her Ravkan accent a little from speaking with everyone else in the mansion and she's also dressed more modern than she they first met - but she is clearly the girl that he knows as "Mila".
He turns from the shelves and looks at her for a bit, guessing that she does know who he is - but he wants her to say it.
"Of course you do. I told you I was Yuri," is all he says, sticking with his cover story.
The curiosity that she has gives her more bravery and she cuts straight to the point. She repeats herself but she adds a name that she had heard whispered in the Little Palace following the war. "I know who you are, Aleksander." There's not too much of a bite to her words, it's mostly curiosity, interest.
This visibly throws him. He was expecting her to call him the Darkling, not his actual real name. After he recovers, he asks, "What else do you know?"
"I know..." She pauses and she says this next part very carefully. "I know you're not supposed to be here. What happened?" This could be taken in a variety of different ways. She's not going to outright tell him that he's supposed to be dead, that Zoya herself saw his body burnt; she's more... questioning. She's wondering what timeline he's come from.
He bites back an are any of us supposed to be here comment and considers her for a moment. She knows his name, so he most likely knows enough so that he can't successfully lie. He will, however, be as purposefully vague as possible. "There was a... skirmish in Novokribirsk and I woke up here."
"Oh," is all Nina says at first... because her mind is racing through the timeline of the war and when that skirmish would have been. She curses herself for not paying closer attention in her history lessons, but the one thing it means is that in his timeline, he certainly isn't dead or close to it. It's still after... a good part of everything he's done, though. And he has done a lot. She wonders again if it was the best idea for her to confront him alone, but brushes that thought aside. She is and has always been quite foolhardy. "Why did you do it? Everything you did."
Aleks could verbally spar a little more because he is just so tired of hiding everything and maybe, just maybe, he can succeed with her where he failed with Alina. "For Ravka. For all Grisha everywhere so that they - we - would have a place to call home, a place to be safe and free from persecution. Everything I've done was for this cause. Call me a monster, make me your villain, but I will not apologize for doing everything in my power to bring about a better world."
"But... Ravka is in shambles. Ravka is weak. Our Grisha are still persecuted and now they’re being experimented on, tortured with–" Nina was about to mention jurda parem but she stops just in time. "Fjerda is readying for war against us. What were all those deaths worth?" It's clear that she feels as strongly about Ravka and the Grisha as he does. He may also note the past tense in the were and the lack of mention of him in this narrative.
Aleks starts to wonder just what happened after he left and, for the first time, considers the possibility that she comes from a different timeline. He doesn't want to believe her; he can't have failed, his plans couldn't have gone wrong... And yet, why would she lie? If she knew his real name then she knew what he was capable of and how foolish it would be to defy him. (But Alina had defied him… and that was a train of thought he didn’t want to go into now.)
"Then I was defeated," he says, finally, unwilling to believe that the chaos was in any way his doing or any result of his own mad actions. "Because only death would have stopped me from protecting our home."
Nina is actually quite shocked for a moment - that he could admit defeat at any point… and legitimately confused about the way this conversation is going. She thought the Darkling would be truly, undeniably evil. From the way everyone spoke of him, she imagined someone twisted, menacing, and terrifying - not a (by all rights) handsome man with as much love for Ravka as she has. She suddenly feels less justified in cornering him and questioning him.
That confusion forces her to pull out her ace card, what truly stunned her personally during the war, without even considering the timeline of it. It essentially bursts out of her. "But why would you kill Botkin and Ana Kuya? They were innocent! What purpose did that serve?"
Aleks just stares at her. Why would he kill Botkin? Who was Ana Kuya? It wouldn't be the first time he'd been accused of killing people he hadn’t actually killed - but it made no sense. Botkin was the best fighting instructor the Grisha had; he would not kill him and he could not see a reason why he would need to.
But he had been in the Shadow Fold and had just started to reach out for the merzost when this place intervened and pulled him here. If it had not... merzost extracted a terrible price and he would have paid anything to get out of the Fold and back to Alina. If it had warped him beyond all reason then… then he could easily see himself taking more extreme measures, more lives if that was what it would take.
"Peace was never an option," he says finally. "I had tried that once. A long time ago. I learned that to succeed, I had to accept that lives would be lost, innocent or otherwise." He cannot, cannot start to wonder if he had gone down the wrong path. What would he have left? Nothing.
This conversation is rapidly spiraling out of control and so far from how Nina had imagined it would go. She almost feels embarrassed for a moment. In fact, she does feel her cheeks flush with frustration and confusion. Here she was telling everyone about how kind Luo Binghe was to her, encouraging them to think twice about him - and in the same breath, she had been maligning and warning everyone about The Darkling. But this man has made no threats to her so far. This man seems reasonable to a point. She doesn’t entirely agree with what he's saying, but he seems legitimately confused by her accusations. She thinks about what Shen Qingqiu had said about separate streams and wonders if that applies to the situation at hand at all.
On the other hand, she thinks of Keramzin burning, of the terrifying escape, and of the war. Her throat feels dry. "There will always be a cost and sometimes that cost may be lives," she says, surprised that she is agreeing with him on that point. She thinks of herself closing the door on the Wellmother as she was being torn apart by the reanimated corpses and how little remorse she had felt then, "but... you are wrong. Peace is always an option."
Aleks wishes he could agree with her. He had thought that once, when he was younger. He just signs and shakes his head. He seems ancient at this moment, tired. "No. Not as long as people still fear Grisha and what we are. They will always hate us and they will always try to contain us, kill us, and use us. There is no other way but war."
In the deepest part of Nina's heart, this is her fear. She's experiencing this first hand at the hands of the Druskelle, hasn't she? Then again in the relative "safety" of Ketterdam before Kaz Brekker bought out her servitude… And yet her promise to Matthias still sits with her. "There is always hope for even the hardest heart," she says, though her voice wavers when she says it. "People can change. I've witnessed it."
There is something in her voice, the conviction with which she speaks that reminds him a little, somehow, of Alina. It's like a dagger to the heart. He has never let himself wonder and doubt because to do that would be to break. He’d fought alone for so long and made the decisions he’d made because he believed it was the only way to accomplish his goals. He'd had to cut all kindness, all compromise - any feeling that would keep him from marking the difficult calls. If it was all for nothing…
He calls the shadows - not to attack but as a kind of comfort. He lets them twine about his hands and feet before sending them away, his face a hard mask. "Can they? Can they really? They have not in over four hundred years, why is now any different?"
The shadows are a shock to the system and they throw the moment into sharp relief for Nina. They send a chill down her spine and she barely hears what he says, though she can hear the hardness in his words. How could she have been so stupid to have tried to speak with the Darkling alone? Zoya's voice echoes in her head now. Silly, foolhardy Zenik, you never learn - is what she would say if she was here. Always running off on her own, letting her emotions get the best of her. That's what got her into trouble in the first place.
But also... he is right. Grisha have existed for hundreds of years and they have never found a moment of peace in those years. "I am certain there will be peace in Ravka in the future," she says, finding a momentary bite and confidence in her force that she does not feel - but she tells herself that she is the Corpsewitch. She pauses for a moment. "I am also certain that you will have no part in that future." With that, she turns to leave.
Another time, another place, he might have challenged her to see what she could bring against him but there is pride and strength in her that he cannot bring himself to meet at this moment. He lets her go and says nothing, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much her words hurt him, the realization that no, as things stand, he will not have a part in Ravka's future.
As soon as she is far enough away, he turns and goes in the opposite direction
A moment of bravery takes over. "I know who you are," she says. She's tamed her Ravkan accent a little from speaking with everyone else in the mansion and she's also dressed more modern than she they first met - but she is clearly the girl that he knows as "Mila".
He turns from the shelves and looks at her for a bit, guessing that she does know who he is - but he wants her to say it.
"Of course you do. I told you I was Yuri," is all he says, sticking with his cover story.
The curiosity that she has gives her more bravery and she cuts straight to the point. She repeats herself but she adds a name that she had heard whispered in the Little Palace following the war. "I know who you are, Aleksander." There's not too much of a bite to her words, it's mostly curiosity, interest.
This visibly throws him. He was expecting her to call him the Darkling, not his actual real name. After he recovers, he asks, "What else do you know?"
"I know..." She pauses and she says this next part very carefully. "I know you're not supposed to be here. What happened?" This could be taken in a variety of different ways. She's not going to outright tell him that he's supposed to be dead, that Zoya herself saw his body burnt; she's more... questioning. She's wondering what timeline he's come from.
He bites back an are any of us supposed to be here comment and considers her for a moment. She knows his name, so he most likely knows enough so that he can't successfully lie. He will, however, be as purposefully vague as possible. "There was a... skirmish in Novokribirsk and I woke up here."
"Oh," is all Nina says at first... because her mind is racing through the timeline of the war and when that skirmish would have been. She curses herself for not paying closer attention in her history lessons, but the one thing it means is that in his timeline, he certainly isn't dead or close to it. It's still after... a good part of everything he's done, though. And he has done a lot. She wonders again if it was the best idea for her to confront him alone, but brushes that thought aside. She is and has always been quite foolhardy. "Why did you do it? Everything you did."
Aleks could verbally spar a little more because he is just so tired of hiding everything and maybe, just maybe, he can succeed with her where he failed with Alina. "For Ravka. For all Grisha everywhere so that they - we - would have a place to call home, a place to be safe and free from persecution. Everything I've done was for this cause. Call me a monster, make me your villain, but I will not apologize for doing everything in my power to bring about a better world."
"But... Ravka is in shambles. Ravka is weak. Our Grisha are still persecuted and now they’re being experimented on, tortured with–" Nina was about to mention jurda parem but she stops just in time. "Fjerda is readying for war against us. What were all those deaths worth?" It's clear that she feels as strongly about Ravka and the Grisha as he does. He may also note the past tense in the were and the lack of mention of him in this narrative.
Aleks starts to wonder just what happened after he left and, for the first time, considers the possibility that she comes from a different timeline. He doesn't want to believe her; he can't have failed, his plans couldn't have gone wrong... And yet, why would she lie? If she knew his real name then she knew what he was capable of and how foolish it would be to defy him. (But Alina had defied him… and that was a train of thought he didn’t want to go into now.)
"Then I was defeated," he says, finally, unwilling to believe that the chaos was in any way his doing or any result of his own mad actions. "Because only death would have stopped me from protecting our home."
Nina is actually quite shocked for a moment - that he could admit defeat at any point… and legitimately confused about the way this conversation is going. She thought the Darkling would be truly, undeniably evil. From the way everyone spoke of him, she imagined someone twisted, menacing, and terrifying - not a (by all rights) handsome man with as much love for Ravka as she has. She suddenly feels less justified in cornering him and questioning him.
That confusion forces her to pull out her ace card, what truly stunned her personally during the war, without even considering the timeline of it. It essentially bursts out of her. "But why would you kill Botkin and Ana Kuya? They were innocent! What purpose did that serve?"
Aleks just stares at her. Why would he kill Botkin? Who was Ana Kuya? It wouldn't be the first time he'd been accused of killing people he hadn’t actually killed - but it made no sense. Botkin was the best fighting instructor the Grisha had; he would not kill him and he could not see a reason why he would need to.
But he had been in the Shadow Fold and had just started to reach out for the merzost when this place intervened and pulled him here. If it had not... merzost extracted a terrible price and he would have paid anything to get out of the Fold and back to Alina. If it had warped him beyond all reason then… then he could easily see himself taking more extreme measures, more lives if that was what it would take.
"Peace was never an option," he says finally. "I had tried that once. A long time ago. I learned that to succeed, I had to accept that lives would be lost, innocent or otherwise." He cannot, cannot start to wonder if he had gone down the wrong path. What would he have left? Nothing.
This conversation is rapidly spiraling out of control and so far from how Nina had imagined it would go. She almost feels embarrassed for a moment. In fact, she does feel her cheeks flush with frustration and confusion. Here she was telling everyone about how kind Luo Binghe was to her, encouraging them to think twice about him - and in the same breath, she had been maligning and warning everyone about The Darkling. But this man has made no threats to her so far. This man seems reasonable to a point. She doesn’t entirely agree with what he's saying, but he seems legitimately confused by her accusations. She thinks about what Shen Qingqiu had said about separate streams and wonders if that applies to the situation at hand at all.
On the other hand, she thinks of Keramzin burning, of the terrifying escape, and of the war. Her throat feels dry. "There will always be a cost and sometimes that cost may be lives," she says, surprised that she is agreeing with him on that point. She thinks of herself closing the door on the Wellmother as she was being torn apart by the reanimated corpses and how little remorse she had felt then, "but... you are wrong. Peace is always an option."
Aleks wishes he could agree with her. He had thought that once, when he was younger. He just signs and shakes his head. He seems ancient at this moment, tired. "No. Not as long as people still fear Grisha and what we are. They will always hate us and they will always try to contain us, kill us, and use us. There is no other way but war."
In the deepest part of Nina's heart, this is her fear. She's experiencing this first hand at the hands of the Druskelle, hasn't she? Then again in the relative "safety" of Ketterdam before Kaz Brekker bought out her servitude… And yet her promise to Matthias still sits with her. "There is always hope for even the hardest heart," she says, though her voice wavers when she says it. "People can change. I've witnessed it."
There is something in her voice, the conviction with which she speaks that reminds him a little, somehow, of Alina. It's like a dagger to the heart. He has never let himself wonder and doubt because to do that would be to break. He’d fought alone for so long and made the decisions he’d made because he believed it was the only way to accomplish his goals. He'd had to cut all kindness, all compromise - any feeling that would keep him from marking the difficult calls. If it was all for nothing…
He calls the shadows - not to attack but as a kind of comfort. He lets them twine about his hands and feet before sending them away, his face a hard mask. "Can they? Can they really? They have not in over four hundred years, why is now any different?"
The shadows are a shock to the system and they throw the moment into sharp relief for Nina. They send a chill down her spine and she barely hears what he says, though she can hear the hardness in his words. How could she have been so stupid to have tried to speak with the Darkling alone? Zoya's voice echoes in her head now. Silly, foolhardy Zenik, you never learn - is what she would say if she was here. Always running off on her own, letting her emotions get the best of her. That's what got her into trouble in the first place.
But also... he is right. Grisha have existed for hundreds of years and they have never found a moment of peace in those years. "I am certain there will be peace in Ravka in the future," she says, finding a momentary bite and confidence in her force that she does not feel - but she tells herself that she is the Corpsewitch. She pauses for a moment. "I am also certain that you will have no part in that future." With that, she turns to leave.
Another time, another place, he might have challenged her to see what she could bring against him but there is pride and strength in her that he cannot bring himself to meet at this moment. He lets her go and says nothing, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of knowing how much her words hurt him, the realization that no, as things stand, he will not have a part in Ravka's future.
As soon as she is far enough away, he turns and goes in the opposite direction