Saints Day (Grishaverse)

The Cell

(a/n my editing process is like horrible so ignore the spelling mistakes.)

Aletta Elsje Altena had not had the gift of sleep for a very long time.

Depletion flooded her very bones, and the drüskelle sent to stabilize her mental state had to physically hold her up as well, their harsh grip causing bruises to blossom underneath her pale skin.
When the antidote to Jurda Parem had run through her tired veins like water to a wildfire she had almost sobbed in relief. In her miserable eighteen years of life she had never been more relieved.

Or in more pain.
There is blood on her hands and it isn't hers.
"What did I do?" She winced at the hoarse whisper of her own voice speaking the messy Fjerdan tongue, grated down gradually.

There is blood on my hands and it isn't mine

The drüskelle refused to answer, shoving her arm so far behind her shoulder she thought it would break underneath the strain.
When one of them parted her lips and poured in the sedative so fast she spluttered it over her dry lips, she was grateful.

She hated that she was.

The highlight of her waking hours was when the darkness invaded like an army, not one she had the forces to prevent.
The fuzzy haze made her tiny frame wilt as she sagged in their arms.
----
Cold stone greeted Aletta's back like an old friend as light streamed through the tiny window, forcing her eyelids to peel open.

"Hello, sweetheart." The scrape of a guard's rusty voice helped pull Aletta back, her head pounding like a set of drums.
The man sitting on a chair was different from the one before. The other one's name was Joran. He was fourteen, with short icy blonde hair and a trembling smile. The only thing she had to fear about him was the gun at his side.
And the fact he had been inducted into the holy order of Djel, apparently.
The only Fjerdan knowledge she had came from Joran, and the ones before him, being Kerch herself.
There had been a guard before Joran, a drüskelle called Matthias, with shorn blonde hair and a grumpy scowl.

Aletta had really, really hated him.

She had a vivid memory of Matthias telling her that her place was in the kitchen.
"Well." She'd said. "If you'd like to install a kitchen in here, I'd happily oblige."
Matthias had left months ago to go hunt Grisha.
Their ship had sunk, probably due to one of the Grisha, and Matthias was reported dead.
Aletta couldn't say she was upset, as such.
Drüskelle deserved worse.

But it was a shame Joran was gone, he had smuggled in some extra bread for Aletta on the nights she had thought the hunger would tear her apart.
Aletta supposed he had been demoted.
"Where is Joran?" Aletta asked in mangled Fjerdan, so bad the drüskelle winced.
"Do not butcher my native tongue so, Drusje." He flicked a finger as if she wasn't worthy of notice.
Drusje.
Witch.

Having Parem to become Fjerda's attack dog must make the guards think she was an actual 'drusje'.
Aletta was no Grisha.
She had no power, no specialty, no small science. She had been captured by Fjerda when she had tried to earn some extra Kruge in Ketterdam by taking Jan Van Eck's offer: testing Jurda Parem on a regular citizen (herself) to see the effects.

And what an effect it had.

Easy enough, become a test subject, walk away with cash.
She should have known not to trust a greedy Merchant.
He had sold Aletta to Jarl Brum the second he saw the effects on her system. And only he saw the effects.
The others in the room were too dead to view.
"And soon enough." Van Eck had given a slippery smile, "The innovator himself will be at my door. Maybe while you're in Fjerda you'll catch a glimpse."
The Jurda Parem turned Grisha into power-hungry shells.

It had turned Aletta into something worse, yet her bones still craved it, like a piece of candy a child was told they weren't allowed, like a longing for something you could never have enough of, because Parem created a hole inside her.
And the hole couldn't be filled. No matter how much you poured in it kept eating it all up and demanding more.

The Fjerdans used her for attacks against Ravka, to weaken the great Sovereign and lose balance. Attacking the capital under the palace, Os Alta, had been a very bold move.

"Get up!" The drüskelle barked.
She didn't have the strength to scowl only to drag herself over to the wash basin, scrubbing her thin, pale hands of the rust-red blood that once covered them, staring into the cracked mirror.
Oh how she longed to look like she did when she was Saskia. Or Evi even.
She longed to be that plump little girl again, with her brown curls and honey coloured eyes, a spreading grin that seemed like she knew a secret nobody else did.
Being flush with paychecks would have probably helped too.

But the brown curls are long and dirty, the honey coloured eyes have lost their sheen, her pale skin a map of bruises on every broken inch like a code you couldn't decipher.
And Aletta was far too tired to try.

|Journal Of Prisoner 223, recovered in broken Kerch language|
Date: Saints Day
I have had many names.
My birth name is Aletta. When I was ten years old my name was Saskia. When I was twelve years old my name was Evi. When I was fourteen years old my name was Taysna. Now my name is Subject #223.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.