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

The In-Between

A glittering ceiling greeted her when, finally, her eyes were willed to open. And her senses broke loose. The swarming of heartbeats was sounding in her ears, deafening and so crudely unfamiliar. The flow of her blood was itching with the sensation of ice surrounding her, of snow hiding them from view. Athena was laying on a make-shift bed, with her hands bare in the transcendent light, enough for her to witness the atrocities of her own flash. Her mind was in overdrive, trying to make sense of her last flashing memories, of an unclear picture of a flock of golden curls and blue coat.

Her limbs tangled in the sheets, covered by clothes she didn't recognize, her most ominous scars- her slashed arms, her beaten legs, the puncture of a bullet on her collar bone- were all on show for the world to see. Athena felt herself bare without her kefka on her shoulders and her army behind her, she felt like a prisoner to the unknown.

Slowly but surely, her memory came back, Ivan's unmovable face, always pretending to be assured and cruel, the laughter sounding in the Little Palace, the screams of battle scavenging the grounds, the massacre of a home she was supposed to protect. Fear pumping in her heart, she raised herself from the bed, uncertainty filling in. Searching the heartbeats of this cage she found herself in, she discovered one she recognizes." The saint forsaken pirate with his bloody ship", she would think with a grimace resembling a smile. She searched the room for her clothes, for her kefka, for something to make herself seem tall and saintlike, always the general, always a force to be reckoned with. She needed the assurance of the wool, of her rich embroidery, of her own mask and image. She needed to feel mighty.

But there was no trace of her shield and spade, so she made do with what she had. With her invalid attire, but a head held high, a perfectly straight back, she was a lieder still, moving with true aim. There were people coming and going around her, giving her questioning looks, looks that she ignored. She was a soldier trudging through mood, returning home. She was a scarred woman that would never give in to her pain.

She moved with steps assured, and, upon finding the too clever fox with his grinning mouth and never weakened might, she demanded answers, not showing any indications she craved the hug of her kefka. The prince, the privateer, the boy with a heart that never allowed itself to feel pity towards the ones almighty, glanced at all those scars, remembering days of aching with no reason, and found it hard to move over a truth he wanted to scream.

Such feeble things, these feelings are. They take away your voice when you need it most and reduce your scream to a meek song, solidary and straight to the point. Nikolai presented her the stupidity of his brother, the attack on the Grand Palace, the promise he made Alina, the same promise that saved Athena's life from being taken hostage by her own father.

But Athena didn't seem to care much for the life of a feeble prince that in all his arrogance wasted her efforts, destroyed her barriers, made waste of all her work and protection. She could only ask, through a clouded mind "The casualties?" hoping, desperately that she could survive any form of the truth.

"We don't know." Nikolai would answer, anger seeping in his heart, always annoyed in front of a problem he couldn't solve. He saw an imperceptible ghost crossing Athena's eyes, as if the light was taken away from them, only for them to steady themselves once again. It was bizarre to gaze at her now, as if a veil was lifted and he could see her now clearly, her bare arms, her naked feet, her skin a battlefield, his own body holding the tales of battles, won and lost.

There was so much to say, so many people they didn't know whether to grieve or root for... Ivan and Fedyor, a proposal delayed by the world splitting itself into half and leaving them stranded; Athena would remember helping Ivan picking the ring, teasing him mercilessly, before she let herself fall asleep, her pillow storing more and more nightmares. Tolya and Tamar with their promised game of dirty poker would haunt Nikolai's thoughts, beside the memory of Alina's dry humor and Mal's crude gossip about some other noble.

In this corridor with bright light, swarming with sailors and pirates, churning with life, Athena and Nikolai held each other's gaze with something resembling understanding. They had thousands of memories to mourn, hundreds of scars to nurture in the middle of the night, dozens of confessions that waited too long to be said. They were abandoned soldiers, searching for a homeland that was forsaken to them. They were naked souls, refusing to bend in front of the dark truth of their misery and pain.

Time didn't allow them the luxury of mourning, so they did the next best thing they could: Athena, always the practical mind, demanded information, creating plans in her head, ways for the fight to move on, always a strategist, always a general avoiding a crisis. Nikolai, still fazed by her demeanor, ignored the side of himself that wished to reach for her onyx hands, for her bony wrist, and concentrated on a new turn of events, a scheme to get them out of the whole they ended up in.

No matter her pride, Athena was overly aware they needed the sun summoner. Her own powers, while incredulous, shown a weakness she could never recover from, shown faults enough for her to doubt their efficacy. She needed the surety of Alina's light, no matter how unlikely it might have been that she could have survived. Their whole planning was pointless if their supposed saint was dead.

But they continued with it anyways. It was the only hope they had left. Nikolai made sure that his traidings with smuggled goods left signs for the right people, and Athena, tailored to be unrecognizable, forced herself to travel with Nikolai's people, hoping to find along the way some familiar heartbeat, a melody of hope.

On the few occasions Athena was stationed at the Spinning Wheel, she would sit with Nikolai in his spacious office, a bottle of kvas shared between two glasses, trying to figure out outrageous ways for Alina to have escaped, desperately looking at maps, pointing at lackluster initiatives and routes that brought them nothing.

Without her kefka and her hair tailored bright red, with eyes an azure blue, Athena was still a general, dressed clumsily as a sailor or civilian, depending on the journey she returned from. Nikolai, his heart in his throat, the kvas easing his mind, longed for peace, for the ease of Sturmhond. Athena could see it in his eyes, in the way he betrayed slight signs of wariness. Her own features unbeknown to her, foreign but somehow welcoming in their lack of resemblance with past ghosts, shown creases around the eyes, a frown arching the brows, an anger towards their stumbling steps, their lack of clues. She drank little to nothing at all in the absence of her friends, only indulging Nikolai when he specifically asked.

On the one occasion she agreed to a night of drunken scheming, Athena poured herself a glass in the memory of a friend she wasn't sure she will ever see again. She glanced at Nikolai, all charm and light, the improbable type of bravery, and felt herself aging years ahead of her time. There was a certain feeling of defeat, spending a birthday without Ivan's silence and way of turning all her crashing waves into a calm sea. She would wake up the next day at the crack of dawn, embark on yet another flying ship and exude her specific confidence, her air of leadership. But behind those oak doors, in front of the eyes of a future king that could have loved her, if it were not for the thousands of buts standing in his way, she was a soldier in her tranches, seeing her life passing by, another casualty of the war that savaged her whole. She fought and she toiled for this country, for the greed of her father, for her people. And it seemed that, without Alina, her efforts were pointless, wasted on a drowning man that took any helping hand down with him.

She was slowly drowning herself, the empty bottles of kvas in her room were enough proof of that. We know the story of the saint coming out of her prison underground, but what about those left uncertain, with nothing else to cling to but this feeble hope, this worthless thing? What about the pragmatic mind of a strategist, looking at the maps of her country and wanting to tear them apart? What about her despair when she gave away her armor for a costume, for a new face and a life of searching for a lost girl she sometimes mourned at night?

Alina, the saint trying to come to the surface, to make use of the powers she was given and Athena, the Grisha that hide in plain sight, that twist her personality and plays a role; that scrubs herself clean after each mission and goes on another the next day.

Both lost with no aim, in positions they would rather switch each day.