#i hope i did justice with the garden scene rewrite/alternate version

[sanktnikolais]

Invisible String

The three major events of Zoya's life that Nikolai has had glimpses of, and he feels her emotions all the way to his side of the invisible string connecting them.

or that zoyalai psychic/emotional connection au

@grishaverseonline​ mission 12: favourite character - nikolai lantsov

A/N: guess who’s posting a new content after months of hiding? HAHAHA. This was supposed to be posted yesterday for my birthday but I wasn’t able to finish early. So have this late birthday treat from me. ;-;

Warning tho, contains some RoW spoilers, and contains the alternate version (Am’s version LMAO) of the garden scene.

Word count: 5174

They said that it would take a lot for one to get accustomed to the pain that came with losses. 

          Nikolai never realized he had lost so much until he had everything within his reach.

          He didn’t know it was already a loss when his mother had decided to be unfaithful to the King of Ravka and bore an illegitimate child with a Fjerdan merchant. He didn’t know it was already a loss when he had met a certain brown-haired boy in one of his private classes, not knowing that he would be the reason why that same boy would be drafted early for the war that would take his life later on. He didn’t know it was already a loss when he still tried to seek the approval of the older brother that never wanted him, and that would end up in him developing a cunning personality to gain acceptance from everyone around him. He didn’t know it was already a loss when he dropped the guillotine that would imply that his father was guilty of such a heinous crime, exiling both him and his queen to a faraway place, never to set foot on the country they had sworn to protect yet failed in every possible way. 

          It only came to him, when he was finally sitting on the throne and overseeing a broken country, that he hadn’t really gained anything along the way. Only nightmares that weighed on his shoulders and kept him awake at night, and the black scars that were just as dark as the blood of every life lost in the war coating his hands. 

          And pain.

          Both the ones he had known and acknowledged, and the sudden, unexplainable bursts of physical or emotional pain that came to him in the most random times throughout his life.

          Nikolai didn’t know when it started. Being a young royalty that grew up doing everything in his own cunning way had taught him to mask the pain into something less hurting. Whether it was telling horrible jokes or making something more complicated by talking too much—it was his way to beat around the bush and away from the impending truth, thinking that if he ignored it long enough, he would forget it. 

          It worked, somehow, but it only pent up the emotions in his heart that were bound to explode later on. 

          Even though that fact was clear to him, it still wasn't enough to justify his first, sudden outburst when he was twelve. 

          It was quite a normal day—he had another hour with the extra reading on chemistry and Kaelish history he had requested from his tutors, and he was stuck in the library until the late hours of the afternoon. But the truth behind it, however, was to have time to sneak in and out of the palace to visit Dominik and his family in the countryside. 

          The whole day of learning to braid Dominik's sisters' hair had ended happily, with Nikolai able to finish tying all of them, albeit resulting in tangles that would need more attention to fix later. 

          You'll get used to it, Dominik had mused with a light laugh. I didn't learn this in just one day. 

          Nikolai thought of them on his way home, seeing how their smiles seemed to reach their eyes when they laughed around each other, something he never saw or felt in the Grand Palace. An unwanted pricking stung his eyes, and he immediately reached up to wipe the tears away. It was foolish to be longing for something insignificant when he already had everything he needed. He could just ask anything from his servants and tutors, and they would appease his request without question. So why was he suddenly—

          His throat clogged up with muffled sobs, the sickening feeling of both anger and sadness constricting his heart as if there was a fist was trying to crush it. The next thing he knew, he was collapsing on the palace gardens, and the tears were endless. 

          The wind picked up around him, followed by the sound of thunder. But they fell deaf in his ears as the wails tore from his throat. 

          Then it happened. The dreadful images of a ruined church and a horrified expression from the face of an old man flashed before his eyes, along with the searing feeling of anger directed to him. 

          But then the images faded as fast as they had come, and there was the sudden hollow feeling in his chest. 

          Palace guards found him in the same spot a few hours later, curled into a fetal position as if to shield his body from harm. The King had demanded he explain what had happened, and knowing their judgment to anything Nikolai had ever done and said made him lie. He told them he had hurt himself when he tripped and fell in the gardens, and they easily believed it as it was his own foolishness. There was no way they would believe him even if he tried to tell the truth. 

          He had been sent to a Healer right after that to check for other injuries, even when he knew to himself there wasn't any. 

          Except for the sudden hollowness in his heart that could never be filled. 

***

The next one didn't happen until three years later, when Nikolai was fifteen. 

          He would never know what had given him away, but years of sneaking back and forth in the palace made him careless, and it was only a matter of time before Vasily, his ever cruel brother, knew about it.

          "You're just turning sixteen," Vasily said with a sneer. "But you're already tumbling peasant girls. You're no better than father." 

          Fear gripped at his mind almost instantly when he realized that this mistake would befall on Dominik. Nikolai knew too well how commoners who had done something wrong would be punished by being barred from the palace in disgrace, sending them back to their families with nothing else but their clothes and themselves. 

          Nikolai had begged Vasily to hold his tongue, to keep a secret for him. But if there was one thing he knew about his older brother, it was that Vasily never cared about him. 

          So why would Vasily care about some boy with no name? 

          "Do you understand what you have done?" Nikolai asked furiously the next morning when he had cornered Vasily in the lapis drawing room. 

          Vasily merely shrugged. “Your friend won’t get to study with his betters, and you won’t get to keep rambling in the fields like a commoner. I’ve done you both a favor.”

          “His family will lose their stipend. They may not be able to feed themselves without it.” His rage was boiling into something much worse, and he could feel it coursing through his veins. But he still held back. It was his weakness, he realized, that he didn’t have the heart to lash out his anger on someone close to him, no matter how cruel they had treated him. “Dominik won’t be exempt from the draft next year.”

          “Good. The crown needs soldiers,” said Vasily. Then he scoffed, giving Nikolai a once-over. “Maybe he’ll learn his place.” 

          Nikolai had expected his anger to explode, all the pent-up emotions to finally be let go. But he felt disappointed instead, as if he had lost something important. It took him a second to realize that he had lost his respect and admiration for his older brother. 

          For years, he thought that Vasily was better than their father. Whereas their father sat slouched on the throne and shoulders hunched when he stood, Vasily was the exact opposite of him. He always stood tall, chin held up high. He was the spitting image of what Nikolai had imagined a royal should be. 

          But Nikolai had never been ashamed to admit that he was so wrong. 

          "You should be ashamed," said Nikolai quietly. 

          But Vasily only jabbed a finger to Nikolai’s chest. “You do not tell me what I should or shouldn’t do, Sobachka," he snarled, his voice laced with poison, the same one that Nikolai almost drank when Vasily had mixed a droplet of it into Nikolai's cup. "I will be a king, and you will always be Nikolai Nothing.”

          Then it happened again, the strange images appearing before his eyes. Where Nikolai expected it to be the same ones he saw four years ago, they were different this time. 

          The drawing room morphed into a rough terrain full of snow, and an enormous white tiger had replaced the spot where his brother was in front of him, its teeth bared and hind legs laid back to pounce. 

          It was then he felt the sudden feeling to protect himself, his survival instincts kicking in, and he did just that. The images faded, his surroundings fading back to the drawing room. 

          With a strength that came from nights spent roughhousing with peasants and workers alike in some shady fight club in Os Alta's outskirts, Nikolai snatched his brother's finger that was on his chest and twisted hard. 

          Vasily fell to the ground with a yelp. He looked impossibly small. A satisfying feeling settled itself in Nikolai's chest. It was most likely the worst he had seen his brother, and if Nikolai had only known that his older brother was nothing more than a facade to hide such a vile and weak face underneath, he wouldn't have wasted his whole life trying to be like Vasily. 

          "A king never kneels, brother," Nikolai hissed before he left his brother's prone form on the ground. 

          He was sure that Vasily wouldn't let him forget what he had done to him. 

          But the next time his brother would try to come for him, Nikolai would be ready. 

***

The worst one happened almost five years later. 

          He was finally fulfilling his dream as a privateer in the seas, and the name Sturmhond was born right in the middle of the True Sea, never to be forgotten by all sailors and pirates as the years would go on. 

          It was supposed to be a diplomatic meeting with the Fjerdan traders that came from Djerholm. They were set to talk about the territories, with Fjerda claiming that they didn’t allow enemy ships to sail freely at the northern True Sea without permits unless they wanted their ships obliterated by Fjerda. Nikolai had wanted to laugh when he saw the ship; it was too enormous and too sturdy-looking to be of trading purposes only.  He assumed that it had to be a warship since its captain and crew were too confident to stop the Volkvolny. No one ever dared to go against the Volkvolny —the black sails that had guided them for years were already a familiar sight to all the sailors and pirates. Though it was smaller than any warships in the seas, it could still go on par with ships twice as big as it, and it had sunk numerous vessels and gotten away unscathed. 

          These Fjerdan ‘traders’ should have known better than to get in the Volkvolny’s way. 

          True enough, when Nikolai had stepped into the enemy ship to negotiate the terms, he immediately noticed the heavy artillery carelessly covered by a rag on the main deck. They had even attempted to blend it in among the cargo crates scattered on the floor, but the canons were obvious underneath the thin material covering them. He let out a breath. He suddenly wasn’t sure if going here with only his two Shu mercenary turned personal guards was ideal. At least twenty rough-looking men were surrounding them, and their captain, Captain Hjar, was only a bit shorter than Tolya, and yet he still looked impossibly tall than all of them. His hair had been cropped close to his skin, exposing the lined scar that ran from his temple to the spot behind his ear. 

          Tamar had voiced out her concerns then, telling him that something was not right, and Nikolai acknowledged it greatly. The Shu mercenary’s gut instincts already saved their lives countless times before, and he wasn’t going to ignore that. But he knew the Fjerdan crew’s taste for dominance. He wasn’t just going to let these men do as they please to the travelers that would pass their private routes.

          He could only hope that this risky meeting they were doing would turn in their favor.

          And yet as soon as they stood in front of Captain Hjar and his men, the wooden bridge that connected the two ships was cut off, causing shouts of protest from his crew back in his ship.

          “Oh, wow," said Nikolai with mocking surprise. Tolya and Tamar tensed behind him, their hands already poised on the weapons strapped to their belts. He turned back to Hjar. "We haven't even started the meeting yet." 

          Captain Hjar only smirked. "Better not waste your time, little wolf," he said, his voice scratchy as if he had been shouting his whole life. "Why try to prolong this when it would still end in the same result?" 

          "Lay down your sword, Hjar." 

          "These men would be making bread from the bone and skin of skinny Ravkan boys tonight, little wolf. And I can assume your ship has plenty of valuables, aye? I cannot promise not to hurt your men," he said, and his men laughed together with him. When he stopped, his cold eyes held a dangerous glint as he stared at the twins behind Nikolai. "And it'd be fun to have some nice, warm campfire with those two Grisha of yours." 

          Something in Nikolai's mind had quieted, shutting out anything logical from coming into his head. The thoughts halted. His rage slowly took over like a monster finally overwhelming its prey. He felt numb and empty, and he realized that the rage was focused on the Fjerdan captain. 

          Then for the third time in his life,  it  happened again. Everything else faded around him and threw him under the landscape of complete darkness. It was like he had been thrown into the Fold. After a moment, it blurred and shifted to another—a small, empty shop in some town he couldn't recognize where. Then it shifted again, and this time, it showed him a man who was on his knees, clawing at his throat as if he were struggling to breathe. 

          Nikolai held onto those images in vain, so he could make sense of them earlier on. But the rage inside him had him forgetting them in a snap, and all he could feel was anger. Anger towards everything. 

          With that, his body relaxed, and he regarded Hjar with a calm tone. These men needed to know their places. "Maybe you're right about that, Hjar," he asked, and he saw the Fjerdan captain acknowledge him with mocking curiosity. "But it wouldn't be my men who would be butchered today." 

          He saw the shift of expression from the Fjerdan captain's face, and Nikolai pounced with his own sword. 

          The fight hadn't even lasted for a minute. Hjar's men had completely underestimated the mercenary twins by just being Grisha, but they were just as deadly as any well-trained assassins. Soon enough, Nikolai’s crew had the Fjerdans tied up and shoved them down their knees, with Hjar at Nikolai’s mercy. But he felt nothing at all. 

          "You want to know something, captain?" asked Nikolai mildly as he went behind the burly man and held up his tied hands on his back. Hjar gave a pained grunt. Then Nikolai leaned down near the man's ear. "Foolish old captains aren't fit meat for Ravkan men."

          Then he took out his knife and cut the Fjerdan captain's fingers. 

          Nikolai barely heard the man's screams or even felt the blood gushing out from the wounds. He just felt numb all over. If his crew noticed the sudden change in his behavior, they didn't voice it out. Only the twins were the ones who showed a bewildered reaction as Nikolai held the decapitated fingers in his bloodied hands. 

          He threw them over his crew's guard hound dog at the side. "Eat up, Razjen," he said. "I'm pretty sure the dogs would appreciate that kind of meat given to them." 

          That same night, he and his Volkvolny crew had drunk and eaten to their guts' limits from the spoils they had divvied up from the Fjerdan trader ship. From the night until the earliest hours of dawn, they had laughed, celebrated, and sung until their throats were raw and their bellies full. 

          But when the night ended and Nikolai had retreated into the confines of the captain's quarters, he had thrown up everything he had eaten until tears stung his eyes. He had expected them to stop when he was done, but it only worsened as sobs and wails tore from his lips again, just like it had almost a decade ago, when he had collapsed in the palace gardens and cried himself out for a reason he had never known. 

          And as the hours passed and night broke into dawn, the tears had finally stopped. Nikolai fell asleep, but the hole that had made its way to his heart from the first time he felt the sudden shift in his emotions now only felt deeper than before. 

***

Nikolai blinked as he felt the heavy tug in his heart again. It was much more painful than before as if whatever at the other end of the string wanted him to hurt on purpose, and he was left to choose whether to still follow her in or not.

          The funeral had ended hours ago but he could still feel the heaviness and gloom lingering in the air. He wanted to visit Genya in her quarters for the night, just to extend whatever he could offer her for the meantime. But he decided against it when he rounded the corner leading to the Tailor’s chambers, and that’s when he saw Zoya coming out from the door. She had lingered outside for a moment, her hand clutching at the handle as if to hold herself upright. If he looked harder, he was sure it really was the reason as he saw her shoulders shaking and her head was bowed down, something his general never did. 

          A searing pain in his chest made him wince, the hurting so painful it felt like he had just been burned by a branding iron. The want—the need—to reach out for her was the only thing he had wanted to do at that moment. But he willed the thought away, remembering how the things were between them.

          They did not look to each other for comfort, and he knew the last thing Zoya would want was for him to give her his sympathies. It had been their unspoken agreement ever since Ravka was put on their shoulders. There was no time for sentiments, they would only spiral them down much worse. 

          After another minute of silence, Zoya had quietly left, her form completely blending in with the gloominess that surrounded the palace walls. Nikolai decided to follow her out then, and it led him to now, following her through the dark, narrow walkway that led into someplace he wasn’t sure of. Tangles of vines pricked at his skin as he walked further. Eventually, he reached the other end of the path, and the sight of the place astonished him.

          Flowers and shrubs of every variety were lined up in the soil beds, overwhelming the ground in different colors. The open ceiling of the area had allowed frost and snow to fall over the plants, and it coated the leaves and petals alike. It looked almost like a small world of only peace and serenity, and yet it felt like a garden of sadness, with grief dripping on every plant and bleeding through the four walls that surrounded it.

          Nikolai spotted Zoya in the middle of the dim garden, her back turned to him as she looked around. Snow was starting to fall, and it caught in the dark waves of her hair. Under the moonlight, she was glowing, a saint watching over the people. But behind the light that masked her real face, something was wrong. What once was her perfect stance and chin held high, she was now hunched, bent down, as if she were hiding from the world. 

          Then he felt it again, the sharp and painful tug in his chest. But this time, it felt different. This time, it was leading in a direction. 

          And it was leading towards her.

          Nikolai blinked, his eyes widening a fraction. Could it be—

          "I'm running out of room," she said, her voice barely a quivering whisper. 

          Had she known he was following her all along? 

          "Do you—" Nikolai shook his head, unsure of what to say. He tried again. "You tend to this place?" 

          Zoya was silent for a moment. Her shoulders had gone stiff the same way she was poised for battle. But Nikolai had merely asked a question, and he wondered if it was prying enough to cause that reaction from her. 

          "I needed somewhere to go to distract myself, and this has always been the place my feet would lead me to," she said quietly. "It was an old vegetable garden. I found it years ago, back when—" Her voice broke into a muffled cry, and yet there were no tears, like she refused to let them fall. She shook her head, her hands lifting as if to brag about the wonderful bunch of plants around her. But the gesture looked so helpless, so lost, and she let her arms fall back limply to her sides. Then in a broken whisper, she repeated, "I'm running out of room." 

          Nikolai's eyebrows drew tight in concern. He took a step towards her, and stopped almost immediately. It felt like he was treading across a dangerous line that neither of them ever had the guts to cross. Things were already too complicated, whether it’s about Ravka or about them, and he didn’t want to make things worse. But he refused to leave her on her own. Not like this. 

          Slowly, he made his way towards her, feeling the tug become stronger and stronger until he stopped at her side. He felt the cold seep through his clothes, harsh and biting like Zoya’s daily demeanor. But tonight, there was only grief and sadness, and it made everything even colder. 

          There was a long silence between them as he waited for Zoya to speak. Or if she wanted to speak. He wasn’t going to force anything from her. It was already a painful day for them to get through, and he wouldn’t add to the burden they were all carrying on their shoulders. He was grateful for the silence either way. 

          But when Zoya spoke later, her voice was quiet, lacking the usual sharpness it always had. “I plant something new for every Grisha lost,” she started. And there it was again, the heavy feeling in Nikolai’s chest that weighed down on him and made him struggle to breathe. It took all of Nikolai not to reach out for her. Then she lifted her hand and started pointing to the plants. “Heartleaf for Marie. Yew for Sergei. Red Sentinel for Fedyor. Even Ivan has a place. He was once a soldier like us too, before the Darkling corrupted him.” She touched her fingers to a frozen stalk near the edge of the soil bed. “This was for Harshaw, and they will blossom bright orange in the summer, just as bright as his ridiculous hair.”

          Nikolai felt a small smile twitch on his lips. There was an obvious jest in her tone, but her words were sad, still haunted by the past war they could never be free of. He reached for the plant, letting his fingers touch its leaves delicately. He dusted off the frost from the leaves’ surface, and it almost looked as new as ever. The Inferni had once fought beside him in the mountains and with Alina and the others in the Fold, proving his loyalty up until the very end. It was unfortunate that he didn’t get to see past the war as it had already taken his life. 

          “These Dahlias were for Nina when I thought she’d been captured and killed by the Fjerdans,” Zoya continued, her hands reaching out to the flowers next to Harshaw’s. “They bloom with the most ridiculous red flowers in the summer. They’re the size of dinner plates.” Then as steady as her hands were when she first reached out to touch them, they began to tremble badly. “This was the last one I vowed that I would plant. I kept promising myself over and over and over. But they only kept increasing. There was no end. And now David—” She stopped abruptly, her throat clogging up with a quiet sob. “I’m running out of room, Nikolai.”

          A tear escaped Nikolai’s eye, and he quickly wiped it away. He didn’t know why he did that. Earlier in the funeral, he didn't shed a single tear when he gave the eulogy, only the prickling pain that gave the first signs of tears. But they didn’t fall. Guilt had been clawing at him ever since, thinking that he hadn’t cared enough to show that he was mourning the loss of an old friend. It was only reasonable to cry; they were all grieving, after all. So why still hide, when there was no one else to see him?

          Then he realized it was what he had been used to. This was what they were taught. You don’t let yourself wallow in sadness—you get back up and continue on. No matter how heavy the weight on your shoulders was. 

          Soldiers did not cry. Princes did not weep. And kings should never get fazed by such sentiments and emotions. 

          But what if it was the only thing left to do?

          Nikolai glanced at Zoya, seeing tears staining her cheeks as well. She wiped at them hastily and tried her best to blink them away. He heard her draw in a shuddering breath. 

          “They will continue to thrive and bloom as long as they get taken care of,” said Zoya, her fingers curling around a stalk from the dahlias. “But what if they don’t? What if they stopped even as I tend to them everyday?”

          He immediately understood the deeper meaning behind her words. Every life lost under her watch; every Grisha blood staining her hands. It was the weight on her shoulders she had always carried, a weight that existed ever since she had been a soldier, up until now that she was their general. 

          If he could only take all the burden from her chest and carry it along with his own, he would have done it. But that wasn’t how it worked. They were all bound to have their own burdens—it would only be a matter of difference with the people around them that would help them get back up on their feet whenever they get too tired from carrying it all. 

          Nikolai let out a long breath, his gaze landing on the twisting gray branches that ran along the perimeter of the garden. He recognized it right away. “Thorn wood,” he murmured. He felt Zoya’s confusion even before she could voice it out, so he continued speaking. “It grows around, protecting everything within these walls, stronger than anything else in the garden, weathering every season. No matter the winter it endures, it still persists, all prickles and thorns and spines anger just to keep protecting everything here.” Then he turned to her, looking down at the bright and never-ending flames behind her eyes. He gave her a lopsided smile. “Those thorns, they remind me of you. Prickly and sharp, just like you are. But its purpose was to protect all these flowers and plants, like the way you protect our people.”

          Zoya almost looked like she was on the brink of breaking, but her questions persisted. “And what if the winter is just too long and hard? What if it can’t continue protecting them all?”

          He was afraid to reach for her, but he did it anyway. He took her gloved hand in his, and when he expected her to pull away, she didn’t. Instead she folded into him like a flower closing its petals at nightfall. “Then it would still be there, watching over all the flowers and plants, giving them the sense of protection, keeping them strong until the summer comes, even as its life withers away.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze, a laugh escaping his lips. “I do hope I made sense with all that blabbering.”

          This earned a huff from his general. “Who says you ever did?” she said, but he felt her hand squeeze his back, gratitude evident even from that smallest of gestures. That was when tears fell from her eyes again, and Nikolai felt some of his own as well. 

          Trusting what his gut told him to do, he wrapped his arm around her. 

          And in the same exact moment, Nikolai didn’t feel the painful tug in his chest anymore. It was as if he had undone all the tangles and knots between, and he could finally pass through the thread without difficulties. 

          Zoya seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then with a soft breath, she let herself lean against him. Zoya the deadly. Zoya the ferocious. The weight of her against him felt like benediction, the long lost piece from the puzzle that he had been trying to figure out for years. For the first time in his short life, he felt at peace. He had been strong for his country, his soldiers, his friends. It meant something entirely different to be strong for her.

          When he thought that they did not look at each other for comfort, he had just been understanding it quite differently. No, they gave each other comfort in their own way—whether it was through sharp wits and harsh words that kept their will stronger, or even just through knowing looks and long silences. It was their way to tell each other that they were always there to keep each other marching on their feet, and pull each other from the darkness they were both continuously fighting their way out of. 

          There would still be a lot of problems to face, obstacles to get past with, lives to be lost. But they would be alright. They still had each other to get through everything, and it was enough. 

          Together.

          And that’s how it would be from then on until the very end.

***

He used to believe that the other end of the string was just like any other end, blunt and empty. Not once did he ever think that he could be wrong.

          Now, Nikolai knew one thing. It would always lead towards her.