Don't make him the villain

Aleksander part 4

The Darkling felt the woman slip away from his arms. He let her go, feeling completely drained, decided to get a few more hours of sleep before facing the day. He unleashed the hook his powers had on his mind as if opening a tap and letting the water run freely. It seeped from his body like smoke from a newly lit candle, washing over the room's floor coating everything in dark shadows.

He was tired of thinking, tired of planning, tired of lying, and tired of desperately trying to convince everyone that he was right. The sun summoner was turning against him for good.He did not hear the door close when his body escaped back into slumber. Then, for the first time in a while, he dreamt of her instead of Alina.

🌑🌓🌕

She was wearing his kefta, the sleeves too long on her arms, the shoulders lining up too widely. She was running her hands on the silver stitching, looking at the intricate detailing that ran all the way down the back of the spine. The thickness of the fabric swallowing her entirely, making her appear even smaller in the tent.

She turned around and took a scared step back, her eyes meeting his in surprise, clearly not having had the intention of getting caught. "Sorry?"
She said tentatively, definitely not meaning it at all.
"What a great thief you are. You steal my powers and now my clothes?"
"I'm not stealing anything, I'm borrowing"

He walked towards her and she took a step back, bumping against the small desk layered in paperwork and reports. He stood in front of her, her hands reaching for the front of the kefta ready to take it off, or perhaps holding it shut to cover her body. He leaned down, testing to see how she would react, noticing that she stopped breathing for a second as he got closer. Instead, he moved around her, reaching for maps he had left on the table and adding some notes he had just received from the reconnaissance troop and the tracking team that had just come back. It was never-ending, always plans of war, always threats of murder, always pushed to find a solution for the fold, always looking for more power. Tracking down amplifiers was a hard task.

She moved away from the desk swiftly, going to lie down on the mattress. He could see from out of the corner of his eyes that she was watching her hand intently, holding it up high over her face as if reaching to touch the draping of the ceiling. She was behaving quite a lot more than he had initially pictured, maybe chaining her down was not necessary anymore. At least, chaining her for security purposes and not for other things.

"So, what are you gonna do about the power thing?"A good question indeed.
He had been thinking about it since yesterday, digging in the back of his knowledge for a scrap of information that could be useful. He only had the books of his ancestors and what his mother had taught him.

"The Morozova texts imply that you have to trust me enough to let me take it back from you." He replied, clearing his desk and locking it in a crate, ready for tomorrow's transport.
"Okay then, are you gonna keep hugging me to sleep until I trust you? Is that your plan?"
He had not conceived a plan yet, he was relying on hypothesis alone, and he was not ready to admit that he did not dislike how her idea sounded, seeing her sprawled in his bed wearing black.
"Trust goes both ways. You are not a prisoner here, I won't force you to stay, but you know the consequences if you leave."
"That sounds a bit like forcing."
"Then I'm asking you to stay", he weighed the next words in his mind before saying them out loud, "for me".

It made him feel so vulnerable.

Her brows rose at the offer, he could almost see the gears turning in her mind, trying to see if this was a ruse.
"Very well, but I want the knife back, and no more tying me up," she said eventually.
He stared at her with fake concern, preferring to make her feel like she was some semblance of a threat to him rather than a pretty ornament he got to toy with until she becomes a nuisance. "Trust, right?" She adds.