WHO: Alina & Mal WHAT: Mal comes home to find dark!Alina (aka evil twin!Alina) WHEN: backdated to the evil twin mirror plot WHERE: their room on the Volkvolny WARNINGS: nothing major, Mal doesn't get hurt, just tied up.
It had been a long, long time since Alina Starkov had left Ravka. Before the war certainly. She remained in the Big Palace and ruled from there, circled by her Grisha. There had once been a time when she would have given anything to travel all the lands, but those dreams had dissipated along with the rest of her humanity when Mal had died.
But, right now, she quite clearly was not in Ravka. She didn’t know where she was, and she didn’t know what she was wearing, but she was displeased, because it not the black kefta that she had reclaimed after the Darkling’s demise. The fabric felt coarse compared to that.
The rooms she was in were small as well, and the the walls were thin -- noise of all sorts carried. Just where was she? And how had brought her here -- and who? She had no doubt that this was a trap, but she’d ceased to have enemies of any notice awhile ago.
She walked into another room and then froze. If anything could have caught her more off guard than her sudden appearance in another world, it was this. Mal. She held out a hand and tested the light around him, expecting it to be some sort of illusion. It was more shocking when, no matter how she shifted the light, his appearance remained unchanged.
“What is this?” she asked.
…
It was an afternoon like any other, at least so far as Mal knew. He’d spent the morning at the zoo, and returned home to the Volkvolny. It was still strange to have a ship on the inside that looked like a house on the outside, but no stranger than anything else about this place.
He set down his bag and was on the way to the kitchen for something to eat, when Alina appeared. The first thing he noticed was her hair; it was dark. Not the light brown of her natural hair from before it had gone white, but even darker.
“You didn’t tell me you were going to dye your hair,” he said good-naturedly. He had noticed the way she was looking at him, but merely raised an eyebrow in return.
--
That was certainly the last thing she had expected to hear from Mal, whether this was a trick, reality, or some spirit come back to haunt her. There was no place or time where she would expect those to be the first words he would say to her.
Her fingers skimmed the edge of her hair before she was able to stop herself, and she immediately felt flush with irritation. How foolish it was that he had been able to bring her so low once upon a time: He had made her feel inferior to Zoya of all people. She had been right to cull him from her -- him and Nikolai and Aleksander. They had all been so limited in how they could see her and, in turn, had placed their limitations on her. It was only when she had been able to see herself unhindered and with clear eyes had she been able to see all the possibilities of being a rare bringer of light -- the one who chose when the darkness could come. She was a living saint.
Besides the emotional pull of the question, it didn’t make sense; her hair had been this color for a long time now.
“What is this?” she asked again, and her voice grew colder.
…
Mal’s brow furrowed; he was just as confused by the flush of her skin as he was by the question and the tone of her voice. He tilted his head to consider her, and the more he looked, the more he could see that the difference in her went beyond the color of her hair. His insides chilled, and he unconsciously straightened his spine, steeling himself for the worst.
“I don’t know,” he said, honestly. “What do you think it is?”
--
“A trap,” Alina answered without hesitation; she wasn’t going to fear or the emotional doubt that this was obviously trying to provoke. She had cut Mal from her heart a long time ago. There was nothing left of him now, and although it threw her off balance to see her in front of him, so much more vivid than anything she had imagined, she wasn’t going to fall sway to something so petty as regret.
…
Mal had, unfortunately for him, grown accustomed to being happy with Alina, which meant that this was going to hurt. Just because he saw it coming didn’t really make it easier to bear, but he closed his eyes for a moment and tried to distance himself from it anyway. When he opened them again, he looked at her hands instead of her face.
“Mm,” he murmured, thoughtfully. Then he guessed, “You think I’m not real.”
--
“I know you’re not real,” Alina answered sharply. This had to be one of Nikolai’s tricks. She didn’t know how, but she didn’t think anybody else in the world would dare to use this particular trick other than Nikolai Lantsov. She had thought that she had negated the threat he posed, but there were those who were still loyal to him. If he had orchestrated this from within his personalized prison, though, even she had underestimated him. She was going to have to kill him.
…
Mal contemplated this for a moment in silence. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do; was there something he could do to prove that he was real? Would that actually help, or would it upset her even more? He was fairly sure that any sudden movements would not be taken well, and he wasn’t particularly interested in risking his life unnecessarily. Of course, if she got it into her head that she was going to kill him - even if he had done nothing to pose any threat - there wasn’t much he could do to resist.
He glanced down at her wrists, because he couldn’t seem to help himself. There were the scales from the sea whip, and on the other - white bone that had definitely come from some part of his body. It made him feel strangely numb to see it.
If not for that, he might have managed a joke; he could pull a joke and a smile out at almost anytime, but he couldn’t quite do it now. “Well, then,” he said, instead, “If I’m not real, I suppose you won’t mind if I just go about my business?”
He wasn’t sure precisely what that business was going to be; he had come home with the intention of seeing Alina and spending time with her, but it was clear that spending time with this Alina wasn’t going to be pleasant. He really didn’t know what to do with her.
--
Alina saw his gaze drop down to the bones around her wrist. She half expected for the illusion to dissipate then. Instead, she was caught off guard by the comment he made. It was so utterly Mal. She had forgotten how amusing she had found him. She had forced herself to forget many of the ways that he had made her happy when she was weaker.
Nikolai had outdone himself on this one.
But Alina wasn’t going to be swayed. It was too late for that now. She summoned the shadows that she had inherited from the Darkling and bound them about Mal’s arms.
…
“I’ll take that as a no,” Mal said drily, since his mouth wasn’t bound. He wasn’t even really surprised by the shadows, or the fact that she would move to restrain him. There was no point in trying to struggle, so he didn’t. It wasn’t because she was so much more powerful; against any other Grisha, especially the Darkling, it wouldn’t have stopped him for a second.
Alina was different. Not just because their fates were tied together, because he had been made in a way that meant she would gain power by killing him. No, mostly because he loved her, and his life revolved around protecting her. Protecting himself from her would cause her harm, and defeat the higher purpose.