A funeral march for the passing of gods - Shadow And Bone- Nikolai Lantsov/OC

Siege and Storm

When the sun summoner would return, a lost prince, a lover full of woe, and an army of monks in toe, Athena prepared the key to her father old quarters, folded a blue kefka on the bed and awaited her dismissal from her job. When Alina, young and prideful, greedy for power, created a hole through the dome of the Little Palace, Athena was working on more paperwork, on more fundraisers. The sound brought the remembrance of the ruins of Novokribirsk in her heart, the memory of death lingering, the image of Ivan's face behind ice, the screams of little girls rushing away from the emerging darkness.

Coming upon a saint squabbling with some rebelling Grisha, Athena put on the most scornful face she could have render, straightened her back, and demanded peace.

" This is not how we survive this war. Stop behaving like children and start acting like soldiers." Athena couldn't be kind or forgiving, she had the weight of a nation to carry, the responsibilities of a general to fulfill. She needed an army that stood a chance before the Darkling, not one arguing in the halls and snapping at each other in training. Her people, albeit a bit ashamed, albeit a bit angry, kept the silence, their protests quieted by the force of their leader. Alina might have been offered the position now, but it was Athena that held the respect of the entire Little Palace in her hands.

" How do you do it?" An exhausted Alina would wonder, tired of being belittled, seen as nothing more than a lantern in the dark, a little girl that knew nothing about pain and war, grief and sorrow.

" This is the weight we carry, Alina. We must pretend it isn't crushing us. We must not falter." Athena would have liked to offer her hope, something to cling to, something to make the mess they ended up into a bit more bearable. But she didn't know how, all she knew how to do was be pragmatic over everything else, do the tiresome work, the papers, convince the Grisha to at least listen to the saint living in their home, to give her a chance. It was Alina who came up with the idea of a war council, and it was still Alina that required Athena to attend, not as representative of any order, but as a general that could offer council. In front of her, the Grisha at least pounder before arguing with changes.

Zoya was still ruthless and concerned about the home she knew, about the world she was raised in, but Athena stood proud, belief strong in her voice, and reminded her that the old ways could not salvage the new weapons they were about to face. Alina, the power of two amplifiers in her hands, talked about creating an army that the Darkling didn't dare to. Creating an army unified by their differences, by their uniqueness. She pressed on the idea that their colors would not matter when they are dead, and their bodies do not receive a proper burial.

Athena, always proper and silently proud, would nod her head, knowing her people are in good hands, at last.

Athena would enter her father's old war room, look at the maps covering the walls, and curse his mere existence, his damned colours and the way he dared to destroy their home, to put an axe through the front door. She would toil with David over weapons and argue with the pirate prince about the need for more boats.

Nikolai, always the charmer, would remind her his inventions could sour into the sky, away from the world they were marred to live in and climb the heavens. " I could even give you a ride, you needn't oppose me so fervently." She would remind him the last of his invention that raised itself off the ground crashed into a lake. She would remind him there weren't enough squallers to spare for such dreams.

" If it would come down to an ambush, we will have to survive it here." In her home, in the place she held her friends tight, in which she learned to walk, talk, fight and summon. In the place she would give her life to protect, no matter how dark the times might get.

" How many squallers do you have to spare?" Nikolai would ask the women with onyx eyes, so easily mistaken for her fathers, always the modern mind, always the bastard son with a tremendous will to survive.

" Why don't you ask them yourself?"

" Dully noted, general Morozova" He knew her real name, of course he did. After long discussions with Alina about Ilya's amplifiers, about the darkling descending line, about his sins and about his greed, about how his simple powers were a miscalculation. He knew her title and her linage, but he didn't know her.

" Don't call me that." Athena would sneer, the name a reminder of a past she didn't know, of a family she wanted to depart from, of a grandmother that didn't want to look her in the eyes, a father that asked too much and gave her to little, of a mother that died too young, foolish in believing it was love the darkling has offered her. Athena never knew a real family other than the one she forged by her own hands, made out of children playing soldiers, out of adults that grew up alone and bitter. She needed no ones' name to make it her own, she needed nothing from her father to be mighty.

Nikolai would look at her in that second, the ice seemingly creeping around them, the way her eyes glimmered like a lake in the frozen winter and wonder about sainthood and power. He thought about how this woman could become so much more.

He didn't know that it was her pain that he felt over his past 2 decades of life, her suffering, her exhaustion, her wounds and her scars. How would he have felt then, the forever romantic? Would guilt creep into his mind while flirting with Alina, would remorse at her tired eyes, at her fibbing hands, at her always-emitting-light window stopped him? Probably not. This was not the place for soulmates, Nikolai wanted to salvage a nation that would drown him, wanted a crown upon his head and a sun saint as a queen, wanted the power that comes with it, wanted to save his home just as much as Athena needed to protect hers.

Love demanded too much and gave to little. Both of them knew enough about that to even fathom the possibility of reaching their hands toward it.

But still, they did. Athena would sit in her office, bottle of kvas beside her tower of papers, while Ivan would grumble about training with the Durasts and having to teach noobies how to produce the most damage. Athena would listen while filling in a form and make comments about how he needed to me more patient.

" We don't have the time to be patient"

" We don't have the time to argue and blame each other for our mistakes either." She would remind him, and he would love her enough to pounder over it, trusting his friend more than his own mind. They would talk about Fedyor's kindness and ability to always lift the spirits of the room. They would talk about what they wished they had, a better lighting in the office, better food, a peaceful sleep, less nightmares, peace. These were men and women stranded in a war they didn't believe they could win. People that spited death each day, that kept living even when they felt they shouldn't.

Athena would wake up from the same repeating image of the disaster of Novokribirsk, make herself some tea, and count the heartbeats in the Palace. There were fewer now, all seemingly at sleep, except for one, conveniently next door.

On those kinds of nights, she would knock on Alina's door, offer her a cup of tea and sit in silence. This was the room where she came to report battle victories and casualties, successes and never losses. Now, she shared a tea with the sun summoner and wondered what world was better. They would talk too about Mal and how much Alina felt like she was letting him down, about feeble things, like love in the time of war. And they talked about soulmates too.

" I knew since I came to the orphanage. I cut my hand and he felt it too" Those were easier times, when she and Mal needn't worry about saving the world from a maniac, when they could run through the meadow and worry only about the scratches on their knees. "Do you know yours?"

" No." Athena would say, twirling her tea in the cup and keeping it at precisely the perfect temperature. She sometimes wondered if, were she a normal girl, a normal Grisha even, the stung in her finger or the throbbing of a toe might have been exciting, might have given her hope that there could be someone out there made out of the same material that she had buried in her soul. But that was too far of a possibility, the world too wide, the hold of her home too dear for her to depart. And weren't her pains enough of a burden, her thousands of wounds, her scars aching each day? Why need the making burden her, burden her other half with such weight?

" Do you want to?" Athena never enjoyed the talk of soulmates, but Alina wanted to see her human, wanted to feel less inadequate in her kefka that screamed sainthood, that screamed power. But Athena could only offer the truth" I don't need the making to dictate who I love. I won't search for a fairytale." She might have added her father's famed words, but she was trying to stop living by his so-called advice. She wanted to destroy his constant voice living in her head, telling her how to live her life, how to lead and how to behave.

"Aren't you tired?" Alina would ask, because she was. Tired of seeing the darkling in each of her dreams, tired of facing the Grisha that never made her job easier, tired of the constant responsibilities, tired of this war she didn't want to be a part of.

And gloriously, Athena could show herself as being human." Exhausted" she would exhale, done with the nightmare, with the horrors with the aching bite of a demon on her left shoulder. "But we are soldiers, Alina. And we march on." She needed to remind both of them that. The cold truth of the reality they were living in.

"Do you ever crumble?" Alina would push still, hoping for a crumble of flaw in the women before her, the Grisha that should have been the saint, the commander. Alina, tired from the scorn of her people, from all the demands of the world, wanted to just stay there, drinking tea, and forget that she was a saint and Athena some almighty and powerful being. She just wanted a friend to talk to about Mal and gossip about some insignificant thing. Not worry about responsibilities and the weight of the world on their shoulders.

"We all do, Alina. What counts is that we put ourselves back together and stand taller than before."

These two women, sitting in a dim lit room, the maps of the world on the walls, the faith of a nation in their hands. Alina knew all the twists of these mountains, all the crests of the borders between Ravka and the Shu, between her home and frozen Fjerda. She looked at those drawings and saw kinder times, when she was a teenager in love with her best friends, worrying over her last assignment and not over the possible doom of all that she loves most. Athena didn't admire the maps for their beauty, she only read the city on them all, remembering battles and lives lost, people that weren't offered a funeral. Alina looked at those maps and saw an easier past, Athena looked at them and reminisced over her buried grief, over the names of lost soul: Lidia, Veronica, Alexei, Leo, Mihaela, and so many more. She thought about who might mourn her when she was gone. Who would morn them all when the dust recedes and the bodies turn cold.

They would have their small victories and terrible losses, but for now, they were safe, or the closest thing that could get to being safe.

When the demonstration for David's new creation came, Athena was waiting on the grounds, reaching for the water in the lake, for a reminder of safety. She took out the fire that took over the woods and basically tackled David to the ground. It seemed unimaginable but the great commander of the Grisha was smiling, bigger than the whole sky could have ever fathomed. She washed away the sooth from the dried-up grass and was dragged by Fedyor to the small gathering of overjoyed soldiers cheering this small triumph.

"Take a break, Athena. That much paperwork and your eyes would fall out." Fedyor would tell her, a smile tugging the corners of his lips, his left hand holding Ivan's outstretched one. Athena felt the tiniest of rush in her friend's heart, the steady peace of Fedyor's, and thought back to her reminisce of soulmates and all the love she didn't really have. But it was a moment of joy, so she ceased her worry, her gloom, and stayed with her friends, trying to banish the thought of her father scheming to kill them all or the reminder of her responsibilities awaiting in her office. She accepted a glass of kvas, then another, knowing it was easier to drown in the euphoria, in the mindlessness of this liquor than being stranded in her own sober mind, full of terrors and nightmares.
Alina would glance at her, from the other side of the fire, in all that drunken glory and wonder if this was what humanity she wanted to see. Athena, drunk on her own fears, trying to silent the same screams she heard, the same nightmares that haunted her. Alina would refuse a proposal on the same night, and gain the confession of a bastard prince, a future king, of another being that seemed too perfect to be true. She thought Athena and Nikolai would make a nice pair, the too powerful Grisha and the undefeated king. She didn't guess at their bound that meant little to nothing in the war, at the way Athena glanced at the foolish prince and smiled in gratitude for his reckless ideas that offered this wreck of an army some hope. She didn't think Nikolai would be just as conflicted by her smile as she was.

He didn't know her, not really. he might remember a gracious tiny healer, toiling over his sick form, when the world thought that the second son of the king would be terribly lost to an untraceable illness. He was no older that 12 at that time and assured his dear brother Vasily poisoned his hot cocoa. But he didn't have the privilege to accuse a future king, a spoiled teen that wanted to feel unique, special, with no competition for his mother's love, for the people's admiration.

On his supposed death bed, Athena purged him of all poison, not much older than he was. She was tiny and precocious, granting a favor to the king in exchange for some more liberty for the Grisha on the battlefield, another chance for the darkling to obtain power. She cleansed his body of toxins, calmed his fever, stood beside his bed, lacking the sleep and rest any 12 years old required, and did her duty. And if Nikolai might believe he remembered holding her small hand through the worst of it, he would put it down to the fever, to his own imagination. He couldn't fathom the almighty Grisha standing in front of this bonfire, said to have won hundreds of battles, as anything else that what she was now.

Could she have been a child once? Naïve, hopefully holding the hands of a sickly prince, hoping to offer him some peace in his turmoil? This women with a perfect posture even while drunk, could she have been tiny, and childish and anything but wise and composed? If it was not for the distinct memory of a red and blue kefka, Nikolai would have believed it was not her that stood beside him, that saved him.

Alina might have been a miracle, but Athena was the truest of mysteries.

When the faithful day of Nikolai's birthday came, Athena was dinning with all her Grisha friends in the spacious room of the Little Palace, laughing at the frown on Nadia's face after Marie said something crude and inappropriately preposterous. She was eyeing Ivan, mercilessly, making his heart rate raise up three times, trying to make him pluck the courage to take that damn box out of his pocket and ask the question. But the sirens came. And the darkness started flooding the grounds, all of Athena's nightmares coming to life in a single night.

With all the power she could summon, she created a dome of ice big enough to encompass the entirety of the Little Palace. She felt the monsters bashing their bodies against it, the atrocities they were trying to destroy this last attempt at protection. She let in each human hand that touched the wall, hoping, praying they would survive this catastrophe. She couldn't move. She needed to seal cracks, and thicken walls, drying the air, summoning water from the lake, hoping this was not in vain, hoping it would buy them some time. She screamed at the rest to leave, to save what little life was left to save. She looked at Zoya's merciless gaze, at her passing uncertainty, at Ivan fury and Fedyor's sorrow. She was a commander, and she would not allow her army to fall before her.

When Athena felt her ice melting in the blink of an eye, she knew that Alina was safe, somewhere on the roof, trying to slash through those demons. So, she did what any soldier would do. She went out and tried to give her a chance at aiming true. She pushed the darkness in bundles and let Alina's light to the job. She summoned her ice, used all she had in her heart, in her bones, all the small science that resided in her body and hoped it would be enough.

It wasn't.

She saw it before she trully felt it. The way her hands started to twitch, something black and ugly and not hers trying to push through her skin, as if something awoke from inside her bones and wanted to break free. Trying to shake it off, trying to save her people, the only family she knew, from doom, she stood her ground, hand shaking violently, the pain excruciating. Her vision would get blurry from the ache in her bones, and her fingers would become ash-like and then completely onyx, the merzost in her veins reaching forwards, trying to escape the body it was put it.
From the roof of the palace, her best friend would scream her name and try to scramble towards her. From the same roof, Alina would stare petrified by the violent sight, by such slaughter, while Fedyor would hold his lover tightly, trying not to let him go.

Athena was not dead, not yet, but the simple image of her finally crumbling, from a force unbeknown to any of them, was enough to break their rhythm. And in that moment, their battle was lost. Fedyor, kind and smiling Fedyor, that loved Ivan with an open heart, with a steady heart, with a love that never shock with uncertainty, was torn apart by the Nichevo'ya, trying to shield everyone else. Ivan would hold the tiny box in his pocket, squeeze it tight, through the entirety of the war, regret sipping in his never steady heart.

Marie, always the fierce type of beauty, tried to summon winds strong enough to push the demons away, but it wasn't enough. Marie, the gossip, the young girl that loved languages, pretty dresses and her friends above anything else would be a casualty of this war that hit them not on a battlefield, but in their own home.

Elena, the Alkemy with her golden loop earrings and many bracelets, lost her life beside one of her own inventions, only 19 years old. She was strong and fierce and just as intelligent as David was, she was a force to be reckoned with, a name to be remembered, with her sharp humour, and even sharper kindness.

Athena wouldn't witness their death, but she would mourn them all. Laying on the grass she dried of all water, crumbled leaves attaching themselves on her kefka, she waited for the pain to end, she didn't hear the screams of the other Grisha, their war roars, their grief sounding into the night. All she could fathom was only her pain.

Her father would laugh when he would see her, splayed on the ground, his own blood burning her from the inside. It was his curse, his merzost that haunted her body. His darkness that sipped into her muscled and created a home into tender tendons. He would not kill her, not yet. She needed to suffer more before he did. She needed to mourn and grieve all the lives she would have outlived, all the friendships she forged and put before him. She would suffer and thank him for it.

It doesn't happen much differently. Except for the fact that, in that damned chapel, the Darkling threatens Alina with more that the life of those inside, but with the one of his daughter too. "How would you feel to have her blood on your hands, Alina? She offered you advice, she taught you to be foolish and brave. What did all that offer you?"

The Darkling mocked Alina for caring, for wanting, for ever loving, first a tracker, then a general, then a bunch of Grisha that never listened to her. But she did. And she would have died for them all. She would be a blazing sun that would let buildings to crumble, she would be a saint in her sanctuary. She would be a girl that hoped and prayed Mal and Athena and everyone else would survive this rack of a country. She hoped Nikolai was alive to put the pieces back, she hoped Athena would get off the ground with the same certainty she did everything else and help him out. She hoped it would be enough.

It isn't much different. The resistance scurries underground, a saint coming to close to being a martyr, and the monarchy flies towards the skies, leaving the massacre behind. Except for the fact that they don't. Nikolai might have brought his parents to safety, but he still came back, goggles covering his azure eyes, hoping to find something to save, a problem to solve. He saw only darkness covering the grounds, no sun summoner to brighten up the skies, no Athena to make spectacles and domes of ice. He was left in the air, his muscle aching with a burn that was not his own, searching desperately for something to fight for. And he found it. The red and blue kefka, the white embroidery, the flowing hair now damp on the ground. Nikolai didn't understand his pain, but he could read hers. He scurried her in his arms, told the squallers (she so kindly allowed to be charmed by him) to take them away from this sacrilege, from this pain painting the grounds. He looked at Athena's fingers, the colour of smoke, at her face covered in beads of sweat and tried to coerce her into some semblance of conscience. His own pain was making him want to fold into himself, but he wasn't allowed the luxury. There was a flying boat to command and a general to keep breathing.

"Come on, general Morozova. You have to see the view." He was trying to rile her up, to make her be angry at him, to make her look at him. He was glancing at her hands, wondering what would happen if he would hold them, wondering if this suffering would stop, the same fullish 12 years old boy that wanted to believe each and every thing that happened had a reason. The time for things being meant to be was long gone, Dominick death clutching to his bones. Was there a reason for him to lose a brother? Was there a reason for Athena's suffering, for Nikolai's troubles?

He couldn't see any. He could only see a beautiful woman crying from the pain she was feeling, a wise and gracious woman brought down by hands that should have coddled her, should have protected her from harm. He could only see his own hands, trying to hold her, pain aching in his bones, a question burning in his mind.

When the pain simmered to an end, and Athena's body stopped shaking, Nikolai got his feared answer.