horology | the darkling

rain

alone pt 2- alan walker, ava max

we all need a soul to rely on
a shoulder to cry on
a friend through the highs and the lowsi'm not gonna make it alone

/

'You get too close, you make it hard to let you go' - unknown

-

aleksander

Aleksander hadna't slept in more than two days. He wish he had died the day he created the Fold. The darkness suffocated him but for some reason, he just wouldn't die. Maybe it was his curse. The rain poured outside as he poured himself another drink. The room felt murky but the light hurt him. The fucking rain never stops. It was supposed to be spring. He set the glass down heavily on the table, running a hand through his dark hair. His head was spinning; it had been for a while now but he wasn't planning to stop drinking.

Killing was just part of the job but the way she looked at him. The intensity in her eyes that faded into nothing. Apathy. He could see his own terrified reflection in them. It was as if she was looking straight into his black soul. She looked at him as if he were the monster. So many that claimed to love him had looked at him with the same wide-eyed, terrified stare. And yet he couldn't stop. Stop killing, stop hurting everyone around him. Everything he touched perished.

Maybe there was a convoluted pleasure in that; in knowing that there was so much power behind the suffering of others. Aleksander had always enjoyed that power. It had made him a god. But at that moment, he would have given anything not to be the antihero. He would have given anything for Seraphina to show up at his door and told him that she forgave him and that she accepted him. Not as a good man, but a man she understood.

He had lived many lives, had many faces but no matter how many civilisations he built or tore down, there was nobody who understood. That he wasn't a monster.

The shadows lingered at his hands. He looked down at them with disgust and flicked his wrists, whisking them away to the corners. The lights in the room flickered but the General didn't even blink.

There was a childish fear to his anger and guilt. Fear of being alone, scared of being rejected. Aleksander knew that he had been too many people to hold onto the terror but every time he let his guard down, the fear nestles into the furthest reaches of his brain. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard the screams of those he had wronged. Their voices were different sometimes but he could hear words. Sometimes it was a child, sentencing him to a life of darkness, never ending and never peaceful. They all whispered that he would rot in hell and that there was nobody out there, nobody in any time, who would be able to love what he had turned into. Even your mother doesn't, Aleksander, they said, you're a freak. Then, they clawed at his feet, hands covered in blood and soot. They would drag him, screaming, always screaming, trying hopelessly to use his powers. He could never tell if he died but he liked to imagine he did. Anything was more merciful that this.

Seraphina understood because she was like that too. The antihero. Not because she was different, not because she was powerful but because she was born of the same blood as he was. Suffering. Hatred. Pain. Power.

The wind picked up pace. Aleksander walked over to the edge of the window and stared up at the onyx sky. He knew Time was up there, laughing her beautiful cursed laugh. She knew how far he had fallen, she had been there all throughout his glory days and through his darkest moments. But she had never intervened. Never spoke to him, helped him or even insulted him. She just left him to the mercy of the humans. And even Time knew that humans weren't merciful.

Seraphina was just another pawn for Time. The gods were cruel like that. Aleksander knew that too well and he hoped Seraphina knew it too. He hoped she knew that as soon as the die was cast, Time would just throw her aside like a rag doll.

Aleksander shook his head, dislodging the thoughts from his mind. He was a coward. He should have apologised, gone to see her, asked how she was doing. Instead he did nothing and let her wallow in self-hatred. And he hated himself for doing that. It was a vicious cycle that he wasn't powerful enough to break.

Every night, he wondered how she was. If she was eating, if she was in her room in tears. He knew the answer too well, of course. After that, he would tell himself that he was an idiot, beznako, for thinking that. He was the Black Heretic, the General of the Grisha Army and the Creator of the Fold. The monarchy were just pieces in the way to power; he could ruin kings and topple kingdoms with a flick of his wrists. All of that, to make Ravka safe again.

Just once, he tried to make Ravka haven. People have called him by many names; some say he was good, some he was delusional but very little saw him as Sankt. He wanted to be a saint. To know what it felt like to be loved, not feared.

Serphina burst back into his mind. They had shared something, fast and wrong but it was something that he had never felt in a long time. That night before that, they had been sitting in the marble steps at him, watching the stars twinkle their strange dance. They were sitting far away, uncomfortable, not sure if it was love and uncertain of what to feel. The stars shone light on them with sympathy; two broken children who were too young to know how to love.

She smelt like flowers, not the sickly kind but there was just enough sweetness to make her somehow feel melancholic.

'Moi soverenni'

She never called him Aleksander. Not ever. There was something about it that make them both shy away from each other, as if afraid. It sounded inappropriate, like a child cursing profanities.

'My Lieutenant'

He cursed himself for saying that. He had called her Seraphina before.

'Why you have brought me here?'

In all truth, Aleksander wasn't thinking. He was letting himself be guided by emotions, emotions that felt borrowed and cheap. He cursed Time internally. It was her game.

'Teach me about the stars'

Seraphina blinked in surprise but said nothing. It was cold that night, soft breeze in the trees. The silence was overwhelming. Reluctantly, Seraphina slid closer to him. He could feel her small frame, her knee resting against his.

'Well, Polaris used to be my way of finding home when I used to go on hunts. It's the only star that never moves.'

'Why doesn't it move?'

'Don't really know. It was just something my father taught me. His grandfather told him that if he asked Polaris a question, he would hear the breezes whispering the answer.'

The General turned to her, amused.

'And were they right?'

'Well, I had never believed it. I thought they were some fairy tales.'

'That's what my grandmother told me too.'

She looked up at him. He stopped himself from taking a breath. He might have been hallucinating but her eyes looked that they contained the universe.

'Should we try?'

And they did. For a long time. They sat and laughed, something neither of them had done in a while. A sound so serene that the leaves stopped rustling to listen. In the dark, Aleksander's hand found hers. Her hands were so cold he wondered if she was actually alive. His fingers wrapped around hers. 

If time stood still just for a second, she would say that for the first time, they were both happy. Not wondering when the next betrayal will come, not wondering what prophecy they had to fulfil. Aleksander and Seraphina were just children then: children lost in their own world. The stars twinkled brightly for them that night. 

So they stayed like that, sitting next to each other on the cold marble, too afraid to get too close but too scared to let go. Because, they both knew all too well that whatever they had would bring the beginning of the end. 

So, after that night, the stars dimmed their lights and fled into the furtherest expanses of the universe, bracing for the worst of the prophecy of tortured Sankt Morozova. From then on, there was only rain.