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jomiddlemarch · 3 years ago

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And a long watch you would keep

“Ah, Nurse Stark, good, you’re here. Matron says you have a way with the hopeless cases,” Dr. Clarkson said, gesturing for her to approach the patient’s bed. “Major Morrow is one such and I hope you shan’t mind being assigned to his care.”

“Of course not, sir. But what of my other duties?” Alina replied, keeping her eyes trained on the physician in front of her; he wasn’t an officer, but the convalescent home at Downton Abbey was an odd chimera of civilian and military, the Earl of Grantham known for calling in favors and trading on his own past service when it suited him. It was a far cry from the field station in Samogueux, a place she still dreamt of, waking with the taste of mud in her mouth, her hands scrabbling through the crisp sheets for an elusive length of bandage; everything at the Crawley’s grand estate was pristine, polite in a way she’d assumed had been destroyed with the insidious, strangling creep of mustard gas, the grounds remaining perfectly manicured, the ladies of the house elegant in their day-dresses. Tea served in china cups, little sandwiches filled with cress and egg cut in cunning shapes to tempt genteel appetites.

“Your primary responsibility will be Major Morrow but I think you shall find you have plenty of time left to attend to other patients. The Major is not given to complaints or demands, nor much conversation at all,” Dr. Clarkson said. The remark might have sounded sardonic except for some odd amalgam of compassion and respect, as if the Major’s silence was a matter of willpower.

“Is he in a coma?” Alina asked. The man in the bed was pale, but appeared largely unmarked, though there were shadows beneath his closed eyes and his lips were chapped. He was quite tall, dark-haired, in need of a shave, and terribly, terribly still. He was breathing, she could see that if she looked closely, but otherwise, he might have been carved from marble.

“I don’t believe so. Quite the worst case of shellshock we’ve had here at Downton in some time, though,” Dr. Clarkson said. “He’ll need to be fed, bathed, but beyond that, it’s not clear what will bring him out. If he is still intact within, whether there’s man left or just remnants. If we don’t see any change in the next fortnight, I’m afraid we’ll have to send him to one of the larger institutions.”

“To be treated?” Alina asked.

“To wait to die properly, Nurse,” Dr. Clarkson said, dispensing with any obfuscation, his brusque manner not concealing his utter sadness at the suffering and waste the War had wrought. “So, do what you can, will you? The men say he saved their entire unit, more than once, until he finally fell.”

“Certainly, sir,” she replied. “If I could ask a question—”

“Yes, Nurse Stark?”

“Major Morrow, what is his Christian name? I don’t mean to be impertinent, but sometimes they’ll answer better to that than their rank,” she said.

“Yes, I quite see. Major Morrow is Major Alexander Ernest Kiril Morrow. Believe there’s a Russian noble in the family tree. Poor devil has the look of one, never heard him speak but the men never mentioned any accent,” Dr. Clarkson said, nodding at her by way of leave-taking and walking away. She took a step closer to the narrow white bed and looked down at Major Morrow’s face, knowing somehow that he was not asleep.

“I’ll be right back, Major Morrow,” she said, keeping her voice low and even, audible but not startling. She took in the sweep of his lashes, the beginning of silver at his temples, added, “Alexander.”

Nothing happened at first, for all her vaunted talent with the most difficult cases. Nurse Crawley offered her an encouraging smile and an even more encouraging mug of builder’s tea to see her through the evening hours when the men grew sleepy and then silent, but Major Morrow lay motionless in his bed even as Alina dabbed his face with a cloth soaked in cologne and spoke to him as if he were wide awake and prepared to respond. She thought she saw some flicker of awareness when she took his pulse, another when her fingers grazed his cheek, but his eyes remained closed. Most of the water and broth she tried to spoon between his lips dribbled down his chin in a way no enlisted man or officer would have brooked if they had the wherewithal to manage. Whatever was left of the man he’d been was locked away and it was up to her to find the key, if she could.

“You mustn’t give up,” Miss Crawley said, not the apple-cheeked nursing sister, nor the middle one who read for hours to men most disfigured, but the eldest, Lady Mary with her cut glass voice and her equally sharp cheekbones. She had been the last person Alina would have expected such encouragement from. “That’s what they expect, that we’ll leave them. That no one could ever care for a man who’s seen what he has, horrors beyond recounting.”

“You’re not a nurse,” Alina said. Lady Mary took her meaning, as she thought she would.

“No, I’m not. I’m not made for that, I can only manage it for a select few,” she said. Alina remembered the hours Lady Mary had sat beside the bed of a blond man who turned his face to the wall and the glimpses she’d caught of them when he’d recovered enough to sit in a wheelchair. “Really, just the one. But if I may, I’ve seen how it is with the patient you treat. Clarkson’s no fool, no matter what Grandmama and Cousin Isobel think.”

“I’ve only been given a fortnight,” Alina said. Was it a confidence or a challenge—or a plea?

“Then I expect you shall need to make the most of it,” Lady Mary said. “I’ll speak to Carson, Mrs. Patmore can send you some biscuits and tea for the nights, when the house is quiet. Or brandy, if you’d rather.”

“The tea is all I need,” Alina said.

“Spoken like a true Englishwoman,” Lady Mary said, her face changing into something else entirely with her smile, the resemblance to her younger sister suddenly apparent. “I won’t think any less of you should you reconsider the brandy though.”

“Ah vy, seni, moi seni,/ Seni novye moi,/ Seni novye, klenovye,/ Reshotchatye...” Alina sang, very softly, almost as if she were singing just to herself. Her voice wasn’t very good, she could carry the melody but there was little strength behind it, but she knew her limitations and didn’t mind them very much. She’d started singing the old Russian folk song on a whim, thinking of the Major’s middle name, that Kiril so startling hidden within the traditional British names. Thinking perhaps the song would be something he remembered from his early childhood as it was from hers, a song she’d learned from the great aunt who’d raised her after her parents and grandparents all died of a fever.

“Kak i mne po vam, po senichkam,/ Ne hazhivati…”

His voice was raspy, a voice that had screamed Get down bloody well get down for days and weeks of days and cursed and never wept, the tears all held, counted like stars or bullets, the ghost of a lovely tenor. His dark eyes, finally opened, were ones that had seen what wasn’t there so often he might be forgiven for forgetting the difference, except that he hadn’t. Couldn’t. His dark eyes, finally opened, were full of the tears he hadn’t shed. Looking up at her, she saw the age the War had stroked into his cheeks, across his brow, swiped upon his lips like a caress; he could not have been more than twenty-five years old.

“Why did you stop?” he asked. “You didn’t forget what came next.”

“I was waiting for you,” Alina said. Major Morrow was speaking to her as if they’d been talking for hours, a conversation between people who knew each other well, intimates if not friends; she would match him if that’s what he needed, even though she couldn’t help the thousand questions crowding her own mind.

“You were so sure I would answer?” he asked.

“I thought you might,” she said. “If I were patient enough.”

“I’m the patient, though, am I not?” he said. “This is no field hospital, but something like—”

“You are. My name is Miss Stark, I’m one of the nurses. The doctor asked me to look after you. You’re back in England, a ward in one of the great houses, Downton Abbey,” Alina explained. “You’ve been…asleep since you arrived here.”

“I haven’t been sleeping, I’ve been trapped,” he said, his voice tight, filled with an unutterable anguish.

“Are you in pain?” she asked. He made a sound that must have been a laugh, except it was so bitter, so hopeless, no one could have called it that.

“Not the kind that can be helped,” he said. “My misery is of my own making, I must nurse it like a mother with her suckling babe.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think you can be held responsible for the War, for the injuries you suffered,” she said, leavening her gentleness with the practical tone most of the men responded to.

“With all due respect Miss Stark, you have no idea what I’ve done. What I’m capable of,” he said, turning his face away. She sensed his imminent retreat, a door about to close, perhaps irrevocably.

“Tell me,” she said.

“You won’t believe me,” he said.

“That shouldn’t make any difference,” she replied.

“I used the power at my disposal to protect my men, I made darkness from fog, I made a deadly weapon of shadows and I struck without mercy, even as the Germans cried out for mercy,” he said. “I made monsters.”

“For your men. For their lives,” she said. That was all she knew, all that had been said of him. He spoke as if he’d used some perverse magic but she’d worked with enough wounded soldiers to know how their mind would trick them, delude them into memories that had the barest tie to reality. “You sacrificed your peace for cause, Major Morrow.”

He turned back towards her, looking into her face and struggled into a half-sitting position. His eyes glittered with a fervent energy, making her worry whether he had a temperature. She laid her hand across his forehead and saw a curious, queer ease take him.

“What are you?” he murmured. His skin was warm but not hot and the frantic light in his eyes settled into something between bemusement and appeal.

“I told you, a nurse. Someone to look after you,” she said. “I think it would be best if you had something to eat and drink. You haven’t taken much since you got here.”

“It’s late,” he said.

“It’s not too late. I have my ways,” Alina said. “I know how these great houses work, I made sure to make friends with the cook, Mrs. Patmore. Let me get you a cup of tea and maybe something to tempt you beyond broth.”

“You don’t—”

“But I do, Major Morrow,” she said.

“Alexander,” he replied.

As it turned out, he had a fair appetite once the tea and treacle tart were within his reach, a nearly beatific look on his face when he took a sip of the very milky, very sweet cup, his lips forming a soundless Oh! as he swallowed. She’d nearly ladled in the sugar; it was what she might have given him if he’d been in shock, which, she supposed, he had been for the past weeks. He closed his eyes with the first bite of the tart, clearly savoring each mouthful; it was a pity the Cook wasn’t there to see his appreciation. When the last crumb had been licked from his lips, he settled back on his pillows.

“Do you think they’ll send me away now that I’ve rejoined the ranks of the living?” he asked. “Or send me back to the front?”

“You’ll stay right here,” Alina said. “You’re nowhere near well enough to fight and you’re not ill enough to go to the institution Dr. Clarkson had mentioned.”

“You say that with a particular conviction,” he remarked.

“Dr. Clarkson wouldn’t have assigned me to your care unless he was willing to listen to my opinion,” Alina said. “And if it came to it, I’d go above his head—”

“To whom?”

“He could hardly gainsay the Earl of Grantham,” Alina replied.

“You’d speak to the Earl?” Alexander asked.

“I’d speak to his daughters, Lady Mary and Lady Sybil,” Alina said. “I have no doubt, between the two of them, they’d make sure you don’t stir from Downton Abbey until you’re properly better.”

“Why would you do that?” he said.

“You’ve fought such a long time,” she said, patting his hand lightly, noticing how slender and well-formed it was, the hand to draw a bow across a violin’s bridge. The hand that had drawn a bayonet across how many Germans? She felt how he trembled, pressed down and took his hand in hers. “You’re not alone anymore, there are people to look after you, to care for you.”

“You mean, because you are a nurse. Because it’s your job or your profession, your vocation,” he said, all the sweetness gone from his beautifully shaped mouth. She squeezed his hand, startling him.

“No,” she replied, seeing his confusion. He was not used to being contradicted or corrected; what Major was? “I am a nurse and it’s what you said, my profession, my vocation. But that’s not why I’m here now. That’s not what I meant when I said I cared. I’d be in a fair way to get dismissed if Matron finds out what I’ve done, no matter what Dr. Clarkson says.”

“You shan’t be dismissed,” he said. “And if you were—”

“If I were?”

“I’d offer you my hand, but you already have it,” he said, glancing down and then looking up into her face.

“I do,” she said and let him make of it what he would. He sighed and smiled and closed his eyes. She didn’t worry about when he would next wake. Morning wasn’t far off.

This is the picture that inspired the whole fic-- look at little Alexander!

#shadow and bone #downton abbey crossover #wwi au #darklina #darklina server bingo event #nurse!alina #sybil crawley #mary crawley #dr clarkson #period au #italicized oh!#sasha's big wet eyes #sasha's sweet tooth #hurt/comfort #blaming weird shit on merzost #trench warfare

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jomiddlemarch · 3 years ago

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Know your own happiness

Chapter 6

There were no roses left in all of England, the night of the ball; they filled every vase along the great table laid with delicacies, had been woven into garlands for every mantle and bannister, their heady scent warmed by the thousand candles it had taken the maids an hour to trim and light. Alina filched a cluster of white rosebuds from the hothouse for her sash, to match the ribbon she’d wound around her head, and pinched her cheeks to rosiness. If General Kirigan came, she would be glad to look her best and if he did not, it was a good reminder that all her reckless hope could bring her was a pain so ignominious she couldn’t even complain of it. She chose a spot at the far side of the ballroom, suitable to her low station, with a fair view of the dancers and the throngs on the perimeter; if he arrived, he would know to look for her in such a place and she would be well-positioned to notice his entrance. If, if, if…there seemed as many overlaid ifs as there were petals on the rosebuds she wore!

She endeavored to observe the other guests, the ladies in their fine gowns and jewels, the men in jackets and breeches and snowy linen, engaging in lively conversation and even more lively dancing, a scene full of myriad delightful tableaux, which once would have provided her endless amusement. Miss Anne was beguiling the stiff young curate and Miss Elizabeth moved most artfully through the figures of the country dance, attracting the attention of many gentlemen who’d paid her no mind when she was a shy and solitary miss waiting to be invited to the floor. There was so much worth regarding that she told herself she might not even appreciate General Kirigan’s admission to the throng.

Yet despite his sober dress and even more solemn mien, she saw him at once. As much as she had told herself he was simply a man with any man’s flaws and foibles, the moment she saw him, she was struck by how he stood apart from his fellows; how his gait was both graceful and puissant, his gaze acute, every aspect more refined, more compelling than every other gentleman in the room. She let her eyes rest on him as he moved through the room, preparing herself for his approach, his hand offered to invite her to dance or to squire her to the refreshments. Her anticipation, however, was in vain. He walked purposefully, but not towards her, and the arm he held out was to Cousin Eugenia. She could see the care he took in the way he touched her hand, the incline of his head, and could not fail to notice what a lovely pair they made, Eugenia’s bright beauty set off by the General’s regal dark elegance, her attention so focused she did not perceive the Honorable Zenobia’s presence beside her until the other woman spoke.

“It seems I shall have to resign myself to Lord Nicholas,” she said. “A pity, but given his estate and his rather more exuberant and entertaining temperament, a tolerable one. What shall you do when your companionship is no longer required, Miss Starr? Eugenia will be much occupied as the General’s wife and she shan’t need a timid little mouse like yourself scuttling about the halls.”

“I shall go home,” Alina said, as much to herself as to the sneering Zenobia. “I shan’t stay where I’m not wanted—” She broke off, watched as General Kirigan bowed to Eugenia and allowed another young gentleman to take his place as her partner, somehow managing to drift into the shadows.

“Go home? Will they welcome you back? Another mouth to feed, when they have so little. They must have so little, to send you away here,” Zenobia said. “If you had the least vivacity, I might be able to persuade Lord Nicholas to allow you to come visit, but that’s hardly the case. You could make a decent governess, Eugenia’s parents might try to find you a situation—”

“Miss, if you please, you’re needed,” Sukey interrupted from the doorway that led to the servants’ hall, breathless as if she’d run all the way from Cook, afraid of having her ears boxed.

“It seems your future has found you, Miss Starr, how very convenient,” Zenobia said. She didn’t bother to wait for Alina to respond and walked toward the end of the room where Lord Nicholas was laughing gaily, surrounded by a coterie who parted to allow Zenobia through. Sukey stood, anxiously twisting the hem of her apron, and Alina nodded and followed as they made their way to the housekeeper’s private sitting room, oddly empty of the housekeeper or anyone else.

“Sukey?”

“You’re meant to sit down, miss, it’s not long,” Sukey said. “There’s fresh tea in the pot, I made sure I did as was told.”

“Mrs. Bagshaw has allowed this?” Alina asked. The housekeeper was a stern woman and Alina would not have Sukey run afoul of her temper on whatever this errand was to be.

“Oh yes, miss,” Sukey answered. “Once he spoke to her, tweren’t any trouble.”

“He?”

“I beg your pardon for what must appear to be the most arrant nonsensical subterfuge, but I needed to speak with you alone without any risk of discovery and the ball makes that exceedingly difficult,” General Kirigan said from the doorway, somehow taller and even more impressive in the more homely setting than he had been in the middle of the candlelit ballroom.

“As you wish,” Alina said, Sukey slipping out as General Kirigan stepped in and sat down across from Alina, looking like a medieval king on his throne in Mrs. Bagshaw’s worn armchair.

“Miss Starr, there is something of the utmost importance I must discuss with you,” he began and suddenly she was terribly tired, though she had not danced one set. He had and it was enough.

“I must offer my felicitations on your happy news,” she said.

“I don’t understand—”

“But I do, General Kirigan,” she said, as coolly as she was able. “I understand quite well what it signified when you chose to offer your arm to Cousin Eugenia in view of every guest at Gregory Hall, what it meant when you spoke to her and she nodded, and the brevity of the duration between your departure from her and your arrival here is only evidence of her father’s eager approval of your suit.”

“Miss Starr, with all due respect, you understand nothing. In fact, you could not be further from the truth,” he said, his voice a mixture of impatience and reassurance. “But in order for you to do so, I will need to tell you a story and I don’t believe I can manage it if you interrupt. It is not an easy story to tell, especially since not all of it is my own.”

“Should you tell it then?” she asked, knowing she would be up all night wondering about what it was if he demurred, ruing, most bitterly, the questions she’d felt required to ask.

“I must and she will not hold it against me, I cannot think, if she knew what keeping silent would cost. She was tender-hearted, you see, much as you are. She would think of what my silence would mean to you and urge me on, I feel confident of that,” he said. Alina folded her hands in her lap and tried to believe that whatever he told her, she would be able to rise from her chair and walk to her little room with her composure intact, any degree of heartbreak entirely concealed.

“Her name was Louisa and she was my sister, my half-sister actually, the child of my mother and her first husband,” he said. “She was five when I was born. She might well have taken no notice of me, a colicky squalling infant I’ve been told, with nothing much to recommend me, my father dead within a fortnight of my birth, my mother once again an impoverished widow, now with another mouth to feed. But Louisa loved me. Dearly. Even if I never deserved it. Young as she was, she always looked after me, took care of me, played with me. My mother was not one to…coddle her children. It was Louisa who tended my scrapes and bruises, sat with me when I was ill, who told me there was no such thing as a monster when I woke with a nightmare. If only she had been right.”

“What happened to her?” Alina asked, when the pause grew too long, a rose becoming a briar.

“What happens to tender-hearted young ladies who trust too easily, Miss Starr. She fell. From grace. Into ignominy, into despair. She fell ill and when I found her, I knew she did not want to recover, no matter what future I promised her could be hers,” he said. “She only wanted a future for the child, so that is what I vowed to give her, the comfort of knowing her child would never suffer as she had. I had already amassed a sizable fortune and I traded upon my dead father’s name with his distant cousins and their need to take care of a mortgage coming due on Gregory Hall; I made sure everyone knew Eugenia to be the long-desired daughter of the mistress of Gregory Hall, including Eugenia herself.”

“General Kirigan—”

“I kept my vow to Louisa all these years and then, within the past few weeks, I discovered I had failed, or nearly so,” he went on as if having begun, he was unable to stop, driven to the brink by an inexorable candor Alina wondered at him bestowing upon her. There was such pain in his voice, in his countenance, such aching self-recrimination, it was all Alina could do to keep herself from reaching over to take his hand.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“I mean Sir Basil L’Entasser. I mean how he was trying to entice her to run away with him and very nearly succeeding,” he said.

“But however unorthodox a fashion it came about, wedding Sir Basil would have been considered a fine match, sir,” Alina pointed out. “Society would forgive an impetuous match between a beautiful girl like Eugenia and a well-connected peer.”

“I said run away, not wed,” he replied. “He had no intention of marrying her—only ruining her.”

“Dear heavens!” Alina exclaimed.

“He is as far from heaven as it is humanly possible to be, an utter rogue, a loathsome, bloody blackguard—the only saving grace is that he is used to getting his own way and didn’t take much care beyond the obvious to conceal his intent, writing a number of letters which I was able to obtain, to the detriment of his nefarious plans,” he said.

“He will not try again, with some other girl?” Not every young woman would have a guardian as fierce with their seducer as General Kirigan, nor as understanding regarding what insincere words of praise might seem like love’s truest devotion to an innocent.

“I rather think the climate in Madras will end any machinations on his part, if it does not end him entirely,” General Kirigan said with a bitter satisfaction. “The Prince Regent was quite enthused about the plan to send him there, once I mentioned Sir Basil’s disdain for court and the Ton and his vast eagerness to venture further afield. Prinny displayed an uncommon degree of alacrity, I wonder whether Sir Basil has tried to sully more than one daughter of the aristocracy.”

“And the letters—do they pose a risk to Eugenia’s reputation?” Alina asked.

“They are ashes, the ones she received and the ones she sent. She is safe, as safe as I can make her. As I couldn’t make Louisa,” he said. “And that is what I said to her, when we danced just now, our public appearance creating an otherwise unachievable measure of privacy, at no cost to her reputation.”

“And this is why you left so abruptly,” Alina said. “Without any missive or note.”

“It was badly done, I know,” he said, shaking his head. “But I was not sure, when I got word, if I would be able to rescue Eugenia from that wretch and his revolting lust—I could not risk tarnishing your good name with any association with my own, if my initial plan failed and I had to fall back upon the one I hoped to avoid.”

“You could not have meant to marry your own niece, sir—"

“No, of course not! I believe that is the first truly daft remark I’ve ever heard from you, Miss Starr,” he said, some small measure of amusement appearing in his tone and his serious, dark eyes. “I would have found Eugenia wherever he’d abandoned her and taken her abroad, to live a quiet and untroubled life as a widowed Englishwoman. A villa in Portugal maybe or perhaps Malta. But if that was what transpired, I could not give you what you deserved, could not possibly convince you to shackle yourself to me, with the shadows that would cling to my name.”

“You believe I would think less of you, of your offer, if you had had to amend it to protect Eugenia?” Alina asked. He raised an eyebrow, shrugged and nodded.

“That would be the generally accepted response of a properly brought-up young lady and if I sought to use your station to consternate the Ton, I could hardly do well by you by lowering you further. I had intended to make you fall in love with me, I stated that in no uncertain terms, and yet—”

“And yet you acted in perhaps the only way that would ever have accomplished your goal,” Alina said, unable to bear his eyes upon her after the first moment when they lit up like stars, glancing at the teapot, at her folded hands. If she had worried that her feelings were only the idealization borne of absence, his anguished tone while speaking of his lost sister and his restrained ferocity towards Sir Basil, the gentle fondness in his dark eyes when he mentioned Eugenia directly and his concern about the possible harm he might pose to Alina herself had convinced her that her own affections were most definitely secured, far more than by a thoughtful cup of tea or aptly worded compliment.

“I cannot fail to observe you said would, not could or might, Miss Starr,” he replied. “There is a certain implication in that choice, but I shall not speak of it further if I have misconstrued your meaning.”

“I daresay you would not,” Alina replied. “But we have a pot of tea yet to be poured and I believe Mrs. Bagshaw has ceded her chamber to you for at least another hour; I should hate to waste such a rare opportunity for fruitful conversation, Aleksander.” She let him hear his name on her lips, the name she had vowed never to speak, pronounced with the same inflection as the most intimate endearment shared in the marriage-bed. “One lump of sugar or two?”

The correct answer was three.

But that was not something she discovered until much later, when the tea was stone-cold and stewed in the housekeeper’s best Wedgewood pot, the rosebuds at her sash were tucked into Aleksander’s vest pocket, and she was so far beyond the boundaries which constituted being compromised that it was very good indeed that she’d accepted his proposal along with what she considered a most satisfactory expression of his reciprocated affection and he countered was merely a glancing intimation of what he averred was his profound and abiding regard.

Such were his powers of persuasion that she declared, a little breathlessly, that she meant to take up beekeeping, happily provoking a look of such adoring, ardent curiosity she relented nearly at once when pressed for an explanation:

“I see you will require a positively vast supply of honey, given your impressive appetite for sweets.”

#shadow and bone #regency au #austen au #darklina #darklina server bingo event #dancing #sasha's sweet tooth #period au #genya safin #vasily lantsov #zoya #wip status: complete!#romance #fluff #channeling colonel brandon #and fitzwilliam darcy in this one

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darklinaserver · 2 years ago

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Hello everyone! As SAB S2 approaches, the Darklina Discord Server (18+ ONLY) shall be opening up invites. The link will be available for 24 hours at a time, limited to 25 uses, and updated fresh on SATURDAY EST. Hope to see y'all there!

INVITE

SERVER RULES: please read

We are in mids of a Bingo game in which event people from outside the server can participate!

Click for more info!

#invite #the darkling #darklina discord server #alina starkov #darklina server bingo event #aleksander morozova

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jomiddlemarch · 3 years ago

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Bingo!

“Sex pollen, Nina? Seriously? Isn’t that like ancient? Like from Kirk/Spock-slash-in-mimeographed-zines era old?” Alina asked, holding the bingo card in a pincer grasp to indicate her general skeeved-out-ness. Nina gave her a grin that was usually reserved for waffles and post-ski-post-sauna-Matthias, which Alina unfortunately knew after agreeing to share a ski-in-ski-out house when they were college sophomores because they were friends and roommates and Nina offered to pay Alina’s share of the rent in exchange for Alina making a double-batch of snickerdoodles. Inej took a big gulp of her White Russian and Zoya laughed.

“There’s a lot to be said for a classic, baby girl,” Zoya said, tapping her own card. “I’m personally more offended by the utter disrespect for Dune and the Bene Gesserit with the gom jabbar reference and also because the potential need for a tetanus shot is just not doing it for me.”

“I don’t even know what A/B/O is. It’s not blood types and vampires, is it?” Inej asked. “It doesn’t seem like a good idea to ask the interwebs. There might be stuff I couldn’t even unsee.”

“Yeah, it’s not blood types,” Nina said. “And you would probably need a dose of Versed if you Googled—”

“This is your weirdest bingo game ever, Nina,” Alina said. “Honeymooners is right on the same card as breathplay and tentacles—”

“Sun or shadow tentacles,” Nina interrupted.

“Tentacles are tentacles, Nina,” Zoya said.

“I thought we were going to play fuck-marry-kill for a while and then watch something terrible and delicious from the 80s like Lace,” Alina said. “I cannot even imagine what you told Matthias about tonight.”

“I didn’t tell him anything, just that you were all coming over and we were hanging out,” Nina said. “He might have maybe seen an open tab or two on my phone while I was making the bingo cards and turned a little green around the gills…”

“That’s why he agreed to work a double, isn’t it?” Inej said. “I could have swapped with Tamar, you know.”

“My advice is, never explain what Dead dove: do not eat means to him, especially the way you probably would, with a million examples,” Gen said. “He’ll go back to divinity school in a heartbeat and then where will you be?”

“I knew I left off priest!sex!” Nina exclaimed. “Fleabag really put that one back on the map, bless Phoebe Waller-Bridge.”

“Amen,” Zoya said, joined by Alina and Gen, Inej nodding along. Whatever they might disagree about, the glory that was Andrew Scott united them all in a moment of lustful appreciation. Then Alina’s phone buzzed and she looked down at it.

“C’mon, you said, you promised you weren’t going to be all lovey-dovey, joined-at-the-hip about Sasha tonight, not that it isn’t sweet, but I didn’t pick up a case of insulin with the vodka,” Nina complained mildly. Alina made a big show of turning off the phone and jamming it into her purse.

“Fine, fine. He was just telling me he won his Ebay auction, for those vintage amplifiers,” Alina said.

“That means you got the townhouse downcity, with the extra bedroom,” Inej said. “If you have space for those—"

“Yeah,” Alina smiled. “I wasn’t going to talk about it tonight because real estate gets so boring, but yeah. We got it, we close in six weeks.”

“That’s better than winning any sex-positive fanfic bingo card in the world, no offense, Nina,” Gen said.

“None taken,” Nina said. “I’ll let you in on a secret. I managed to get Lace and Lace II on Blu-ray, so we can ditch the bingo cards and settle in for some peak trashy TV.”

#shadow and bone #humor #darklina #darklina server bingo event #how to use up bingo squares I can't begin to write #my 16 yo son actually advised me to write this fic #just make them actually on a bingo card #fangirl mom #family fanfic consultation #references to pop culture abound #shout out to fleabag #ladies night in #helnik #zoya #genya #inej #lace

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jomiddlemarch · 3 years ago

Text

Be always coming home

“Is this what you wanted?” Alina asked, working hard to only see Mal’s face in front of her, the way he set his jaw, dropped his eyes and then gazed into the distance that began over the top of her head and stretched on and on, not the visions her defiant mind conjured: Mal smiling and reaching out, his fingers unfastening the buttons of a kefta, weaving through unbound dark hair as he moaned; Mal cradling a baby in his arms, staring at his child and then looking up with tears in his eyes, his lips curved in a small, tender smile.

“No, it’s not. You have to know that, Alina,” he said, as unhappy as she’d ever heard him but not at all afraid. Not of her and not of the consequences of his actions.

“You wanted her,” she said. “At least for an hour, if that’s how long you even spent—”

“I didn’t think this would happen. You know what they say about the Grisha, Grisha women,” he muttered.

“I suppose I should, since I am one, in case you forgot, Malyen, but no, I don’t,” Alina replied. “What do they say, for all the good it did you?”

“That they have ways of keeping themselves safe, you don’t have to worry about it,” he said.

“You believed in magic? Some sort of perverse sex-magic that would allow you to tumble a woman without any risk—”

“No, I’m not that stupid,” he snapped. “I figured they had medicines. Tonics. Or their Healers could do things. She didn’t make it seem like it was anything to consider. It was her idea, Alina, she approached me.”

“It’s her fault now? Zoya’s?” Alina asked.

“It’s no one’s fault,” he said, sounding tired and old, far older than either of them were, except he was going to be someone’s father. Maybe that’s how old he sounded; she couldn’t be sure. “A baby isn’t a burden but a blessing,” he said, reciting the old proverb Ana Kuya had drummed into their heads as if they’d ever believe her.

“Will you marry her?” Alina asked. “It happens, otkazat’sya and Grisha can wed. It’s permitted.”

“Zoya will decide,” he said. “She is being sent from the Little Palace to a noble’s estate. She said it was that or returning to her family and she didn’t want to go to them. She said the General watches over all the Grisha, that they are precious to him, every single one of them. He would not risk her health or the baby’s, that she could return to active service when she chose. I’m still First Army, married or not, I serve the Tsar and I think you still remember how little he cares about any of us.”

“What do you expect me to say to you? To that? Should I apologize for being Grisha? Why did you even come here to tell me?” She couldn’t have stopped asking the questions if she’d tried, not the Alina she’d become, who cast sfera for a Tsar and had daybreak living in her palms.

“Because you’re my friend, because I wanted someone to know who’d care it was me who was the father,” he said. “General Kirigan’s protection doesn’t extend to me. You might be the only person to know who I was. To tell my baby about me.”

“Zoya could do that,” Alina said. “She wouldn’t lie about who you were.”

“She doesn’t know me,” he said, taking a step closer and reaching out for her hand. It felt nothing like Aleksander’s grasp, no power answering hers, no sense of an abiding devotion. It felt like Mal’s hand that she’d held a million times running through the meadow, grabbing to embark upon a game. His unscarred hand in hers, the feeling of him shrugging making its way from his shoulders all the way down to his fingertips. “You do. You’ve known me my whole life, better than anyone—”

“I loved you,” she admitted. “My whole life.”

“And now?” he said.

“I don’t feel the same. I care, but not the way I did before. I broke my heart over you, Mal,” she said. “I did a lot of things because of you—"

“You saved me, Alina. I know that. I knew that on the skiff,” he said. “I’m greedy, I guess, I’m asking you to save me again.”

“I can’t get the General to change your assignment,” Alina said. It might be true, she wasn’t sure. She wouldn’t ask Aleksander, because she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want Aleksander to let her make the choice.

“I just mean, if I don’t make it back from wherever they send me, talk to my child about me. Tell them who I was, what I liked, how I annoyed you. If I die, make sure my baby isn’t an orphan the way we were, never knowing anything real about our parents, where we came from. Tell my baby I loved them and I wanted to come back. That I wanted to have a house, a farm and goats and a room for them, even if Zoya never wanted to live that way,” he said.

“I don’t want to do that,” Alina began. “But I will. If I have to. Don’t make me have to, Mal.”

“Do I have Sankta Alina’s blessing? They say that’ll keep you safe,” he said.

“No,” she said, squeezing his hand. “But you have my prayers and my promise. Whatever happens, you have that.”

#shadow and bone #darklina server bingo event #darklina off screen #mal gets zoya pregnant #morally grey alina #angst #malyen oretsev #alina starkov #zoya nazyalensky #mal x zoya #no one but mal wants to live on that farm

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darklinaserver · 2 years ago

Photo

Today's the day Everyone! It's Bingo Day!!

The Darklina Server Bingo will run from today through September 30th, but you're free to keep working off of prompts & cards after the event ends!

This year's Bingo event is different from last year's, so please do check the rules out! If you have a question you can ask it here on our server's tumblr page or, if you're in the server, you can ask on the server. Amended rules are posted on Ao3 and on tumblr so that people not on the server can participate. See below the cut for more details and the rules!

🚨 Rules 🚨

Please note, these rules have been slightly modified to remove server-specific language from them. If you’re a server member and you need to take a look at the full set of rules, please head over to the Bingo Rules channel.

1. START: We are starting with 6 Cards that are available for everyone's use, both on Tumblr and on the Discord. No one has ‘dibs’ on any one card. 2. WHAT COUNTS AS BINGO: Fill 5 prompts in a straight line (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal). You can fill all 5 in a single work, or across several works that you create. A "bingo" must be contained on a single card. 3. HOW TO GET "BINGO": Include the square's prompt in the work itself and tag it when you post it. The element should be a significant part of the story--not a passing mention. We are not going to pick through works; we can all agree to follow the honor system. 4. ANNOUNCE YOUR BINGO: If you’re not on the server and you get a “bingo” you can let us know on our tumblr page! You’ll be able to show off a photo of your bingo card, link to the work(s) that satisfied the bingo so folks can go read and enjoy them, and get back to creating! 5. HAVE FUN & PLAY TOGETHER If you need help thinking of ways to incorporate squares into a story, pulse a friend! Collaboration is allowed & encouraged. ❤️

FAQ

🔹 SIX CATEGORIES OF STARTER CARDS

We've been calling these The Big Six on our end, but you can call them whatever you'd like. Free cards, original cards, etc. The wonderful @marzankatm and @bettycooper have made some beautiful edits to these so they're not only prompts cards but also true works of art. These first six cards are also being made available to all you folks who are not on the server to play along. The other 94 cards are server-only!

Our favorites off of these first six cards?

🔹 Bi-Alina Rights ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 🔹 Addams Family Fusion 👀 🔹 Baghra's Bee Method 🐝 🔹 Switched Powers 🥰 🔹 The Banya 💞 🔹 There was only one bed 🛏

🚨 Tags & Collection: 🚨

Please tag your Bingo works with #DDS Bingo 2022 Add your Bingo works to: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/DarklinaBingo

Do I have to be part of the Darklina Discord to participate?

You do not have to be part of the server to participate, these six Bingo cards posted to our tumblr available for everyone to use.

How can I join the Darklina Discord?

Check back on Saturdays for the link!

Okay -- ready, set, GO!

#darklina #darklinaedit #darklinadaily #alinastarkovedit #alina starkov #the darkling #aleksander morozova #aleksandermorozovaedit #shadow and bone #sabedit #shadowandboneedit #shadowandbonecentral #otpsource #jemmablossom #userbecca #DDS Bingo 2022 #darklina discord server #darklina discord server bingo 2022 #events

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