Aleksander Morozova Imagined

Darkness without Light

SPOILERS FOR RUINING AND RISING! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

AU where the Darkling won. Nikolai and Mal are dead it has been 200 hundred years and the Darkling is holding Alina captive and he runs experiments on her with merzost and he controls this side of the world even Kerch. She is the Queen but she has no power. She still has the collar and scales but Mal died before she could get to it. In this AU the Darkling has taken previous sun summoners and experimented on them to see if he could transfer their powers to himself. Once he discovered that killing a sun summoner increases the next sun summoner's power he started hunting them until there weren't any then Alina shows up.

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Drip, drip, drip, water falls onto the cement floor. Alina takes a shuddering breath counting the droplets. 1, 2, 3. She moves her head the bones in her neck cracking and her joints stiff. The movement jostles the shackles around her wrist making the chains rattle and clink. Alina hisses as the steel rubs against her raw skin. She tries to move her arms down but the shackles prevent her from lowering them from the y-shaped position. Her knees burn from rubbing against the hard floor, there is a stickiness surrounding them. She's sure she is bleeding but she can't be sure in the dark. Darkness, always dark, all a tribute to him.

He's the one that put her here, he's the one that locks her up. Always careful to turn out the lights, he has left her here for three days, or at least that's what she thinks. The lack of windows and contact from the outside world makes it hard to tell. 72 hours spent without food or water, Grisha's power does wonders in these situations. She once spent two weeks in here without even knowing it. She'd been so sure that the Darkling had finally granted her mercy and would let her die. But he didn't on the 14th day that saint's forsaken bolted door opened to reveal a perfectly well-manicured Darkling. With his black kefta and billowing cloak to match. He stood high the faint light glinting off the dark crown atop his head, he looked every bit the wicked King he is. 

That had been after Alina had spoken out against his plan to decrease the funding for otkazsya schools. 'Something so trivial is not worth punishment,' is what he had said when his nichevo'ya locked her here. But it had been, every aching minute in this cramped cell was worth the advisers siding with her and pressuring the Darkling into stopping his plan. Now she was here because she refused to sit around another ball to celebrate the anniversary of the Treaty of the Unsea. The centuries had worn her patience and she found she simply couldn't sit through another party celebrating the death of all her friends and the loss of her freedom, of the world's freedom. 

Her friends, beautiful Genya, fierce Tamar and Toyla, Intelligent David, witty Nikolai. The too-clever fox had run out of tricks that day and Mal. Saints, Alina's heart longed to see those beautiful eyes again. How she missed the comfort of his embrace the days they would spend out in the meadow. She frowns as she tries to remember the smell of the wildflowers growing there but she can't. She starts to panic realizing she can't remember the sound of Genya's voice or the stories Tamar and Toyla used to tell her during the long nights in the spinning wheel. 

Frantically, she curls her fingers tracing the jagged scar across her palm. The Darkling had tried to take that from her too and, oh, how she fought. Biting, Scratching, running, hiding, anything she could do to stop him. Eventually, it worked and the Darkling stopped. As punishment, she spent an hour chained to the whipping post as the Darkling sent all sorts of his creatures on her. But she didn't care. She had kept her fingers along that scar until she felt she had dissipated into nothing but that.

A tear slips out of her eye leaving a streak on her cheek. Oh, Mal what would you say if you saw me now. Mal, the meadow is too far I'll never reach you. A few more unwelcome tears slip out until the door creaks open bathing the room in a dim yellow glow. Forcing her to squint.