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dearmantis · 2 years

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Does he know that I'm falling

Pairing: Aleksander Morozova/The Darkling x Durast!Reader

Summary: Tempted by knowledge and power you choose to experiment with forces you should know nothing about, hidden in the shadows of the early morning hours. What are you going to do when the General finally realizes something is not right?

Warnings: Aleksander is his own warning let's be honest here, this is not a nice man, but he doesn't really do anything here. The better warning is that I'm blatantly ignoring established rules of the magic system, not a native english speaker and that this isn't really proofread.

Word Count: 3.1k

Authors' Note: Yes, I've read the books. Yes, I'm gonna ignore canon. Yes, I'm especially ignoring the rules around merzost. It's magic, I can do whatever I want with it. Also title is from the lyrics of the fruits by Paris Paloma.

Part 1 | Series Masterlist

If Baghra knew what you're doing... she would eat you alive. No questions asked. Nobody knows that better than you since you have spent most of your youth training with her, your powers too weak for the Generals liking.

So you avoid her like the plague, deeply convinced that she would be able to feel what you have done, what you do every day, what you're planning to do.

First in the workshops in the morning, last to leave in the night. Kirigan and your fellow Fabrikators think you are simply a very hard worker, an obsessed artist some might say. And in a way you are an obsessed artist. Your paint is just less conventional than people assume.

If anyone finds out what you are doing they will execute you. This simple fact is buried deep inside of your mind, burning bright every time you move your hands to wake your powers, but you can't help yourself.

You have to keep trying. You have to. If you don't you might lose your mind and do something even worse, something even dumber.

And who can truly blame you? Materialki are supposed to seek knowledge, right? That's what everyone encourages you to do. Stay away from the battlefield, you're useless there anyways. Hide away in the libraries and laboratories of Ravka and collect the knowledge of the world. Satisfy your greedy mind and create new out of the materials available to you. Give your existence worth that way, because Saints know the General will never look at someone of the Order of Fabrikators unless they possess knowledge that he requires for one of his plans.

So you do what you do best. In the early morning hours you slip out of your bedroom, awake even before the servants of the night shift leave their positions, and disappear in the workshop, sneaking to your usual station, as far away from the Generals quarters, the door and the windows as possible. The guards know you by now, and if the guards do then so does the General, but lucky for you he has never come down to the workshops when you worked on your little experiments.

You're not stupid and naive enough to believe that it will stay that way. If you don't create a pretend project to present to him soon he will end up questioning what you're working on. Simply claiming that your work was still slow and that you required the extra hours of work to catch up with the progress of the other Durasts would lead to Training with Baghra again and that would be catastrophic, but it's hard enough to resist working on your side project during the day to make corecloth for new keftas already. You can't imagine using some of your limited alone time for some other side project you don't even really care about just to stay save from Kirigan.

Creating the bulletproof fabric is boring, simple work for you and if you tried a bit you could probably work on something new on the side during your day work, but the scolding you would receive if someone caught you would be quite bothersome to deal with. Shit, your team leader already believes you're too weak to even make corecloth, he would definitely report you to the General. You can basically already hear the shadow summoners voice booming.

So you think creating the cloth that keeps you, your fellow Grisha and my personal guard safe is not important enough work for a mighty Durast like you? Do you perhaps believe that you don't need a kefta? That your powers could stop a bullet from a Drüskelle in the air? Do you want to test that theory during a stay at the Fjerdan border?

You shake your head quickly, pushing the imagined scenario far away from your consciousness, and step over to the window furthest in the back of the room, kneeling down to lift the loose wooden board out of the floor. Below it hides a small space, filled with four different notebooks.

Today will be the day, you decide.

First you move the notebooks to your desk, then you close the empty space below the window again. Your hands are shaking and sweaty as you pull out a candle holder and a box of matches. Everything in you screams to keep light sources away from you, to hide in the darkness and let the shadows swallow you as you break another rule of the little palace, but the guards know you're here. Staying in darkness would be suspicious.

When you're done preparing your workstation you're surrounded by three burning candles and four open notebooks, a new, fifth quickly joining, formerly hidden in one of the many inside pockets of your kefta. You pull out a pen and ink bottle as well, dipping the tip of the pen in the dark ink before writing down the date at the top of the first page when you notice with confusion that the ink is black instead of the usual dark blue you tend to favour. Eyes flickering to the paper glued on the bottle you check again but the writing clearly says dark blue. The ink bottle is tinted in a dark blue as well, just like all the other ink bottles you bought before.

It was probably just a mistake from the shopkeeper you bought the bottle from, but you can't stop the paranoid thoughts from racing though your mind, too fast for your rationality to catch and neutralize them. Goosebumps begin to rise over your arms, back and neck.

What if this is an omen?

Stepping back towards the door, you strain your ears to listen, checking if anyone is coming your way, panic thick in your veins. If it is a sign, it either means that today will change you forever, or it's a warning. A warning of the man dressed in black, the one to summon shadows. Your general.

Promise or warning?

What if it's both?

When the fear becomes too much to bear you open the door slowly, leaning out of the room to check the hallway, but you see nothing other than a servant girl, quickly carrying a large, heavy laundry basket with her. You smile nervously at her while your eyes scan the corners for the unnatural darkness that hints that Kirigan is close by, but you see nothing suspicious.

You don't let go of the unease yet, instead choosing to close the door before quickly brushing your fingertips together, reaching out with your powers to look for a small piece of unique metal.

There.

Kirigans ring is in his quarters, moving a few centimetres every few seconds. He's unfortunately already awake, but probably working, distracted by documents and plans for the next few days.

Stepping back to your workstation you open the pages you need in your notebooks, calmness spreading in your body and softening your tense muscles again, smoothing the goosebumps on your skin easily.

You don't even bother sitting down, knowing fully well that you will be too nervous to sit still anyways. Instead you rub your hands together, trying to warm them up a bit since the cold air in the work station is slowly turning your hands stiff. You will need full and precise control over your hands if this is supposed to work without anyone getting hurt.

When you lick your lips and take another deep breath, you force the words out immediately afterwards, closing your eyes and pressing the palms of your hands together lightly while your tongue curls and moves to form the words you've made yourself familiar with over the past few months but never spoke out loud.

It begins with a humming-like feeling in the back of your throat and a tingling sensation in your hands, similar to a limb falling asleep. Then your body becomes warm while you try your hardest to clear your mind from any bad thought you've ever had, including the dread still quietly bubbling below your sternum. If your hypothesis is right then you should be able to do this without catastrophic consequences, as long as you balance yourself completely before you begin the next step.

Your breath hitches once, twice, and you can't help yourself and reach out to check on the location of the ring one more time, this time without moving your hands from the position they're in, before you finally manage to calm your thoughts entirely.

Forcing any happiness or relief down that tries to fight its way up into your heart you open your eyes and begin to pull your hands apart slowly.

It feels like your hands are stuck together with strong, stringy glue, but slowly you begin to make progress. It doesn't hurt, just like you predicted, but that does not mean that the whole act is not exhausting to an almost ridiculous degree.

When your hands are finally around half a metre apart you try to relax a bit, your gaze falling on what stuck your hands together in the first place. It's not black like you expected, like you had seen before. Instead it looks a bit more like an iridescent, melted metal and shimmers like moonlight on the surface of a calm lake. It's bizarre and you almost move your hands to write down what you're seeing. It shifts in shape, moving slowly through the air between your hands like a thick liquid of some kind, almost see-through in some parts.

In the back of your mind you ask yourself if this is the same thing Ilya Morozova saw before he defeated death and payed with his life in the process, because you simply can't imagine that a man worthy of becoming a saint would summon a material like the inky blackness of the fold and decide to use it on a person, fully believing that it could save a life.

No, the Magic, the Merzost, of the fold must be mixed with darkness, there is no other option.

You close your eyes again, relaxing your hands even more, muscle after muscle, while you try to soothe your powers into rest, into letting go.

This is phase 3 of your experiment. Seeing if you can let go of the Merzost, and most importantly: what will follow after it's let loose.

Your hypothesis is that it will stop existing. It was summoned with no purpose, no intention, no emotion, so it has no task to fulfil, no reason to exist, nothing to keep it hooked in this world except your powers that are slowly letting go of it to lay dormant in the core of your soul once more.

Slowly, your hands begin to shake, the muscles exhausted from holding pure magic in your reality, but seconds before you think your arms will give out your powers finally let go and the Merzost begins to break apart into thin strings, then into dust like particles that drop to the surface of your work station before disappearing entirely.

You almost fall to your knees when it's done, instead managing to drop into the chair you pushed aside minutes earlier.

There's a painful ache in your arms and your fingers suddenly feel cold like ice, all the warmth from the merzost gone as if it never existed in the first place.

For a few minutes you just sit and breathe, listening to the birds outside waking up and the servants chatting while they switch shifts, the night shift girls clearly happy to finally be allowed to sleep. The halls fill with yawns from fellow Grisha as well, tired giggling audible in the hallways as the Little Palace slowly wakes up. Breakfast will start in an hour.

When you finally feel like you regained just enough strength you blow out the candles before cleaning the ink off your pen and closing the little bottle. There is no way you will be able to write anything down today, not with how overly exhausted the muscles in your arms are, so instead you choose to hide the notebooks again and walk up to your room to hide under your thick blankets.

Your team leader will scold you but you just summoned pure Merzost without having to pay a price other than some pain and numbness. What he thinks of you doesn't matter right now.

The trip through the Little Palace back to your rooms is weird. You feel distant from the other Grisha surrounding you despite the fact that most of them are just as tired as you are and you can't really pay attention to your surroundings. You're getting more and more dizzy with every step, stopping a few times to take a small breather and press your back to a wall for stability, refusing to sit down and show how sick you feel.

In the back of your mind you know you should check for the position of the Generals ring and try to avoid him and his always watching, seemingly all-knowing eyes, but you're sure if you try to lift your arms now they're going to fall off, so you choose to stay ignorant instead, praying that some Saint will take pity on you and keep you safe.

You're two doors away from your quarters, desperate to feel your soft pillow under your head and the warm comfort of your mattress and blankets, when it suddenly gets eerily quiet in your hallway, but you barely even pick up on the shift in volume and atmosphere around you.

Too caught up in your own miserable physical state you don't notice what's wrong until you find yourself face to face with an Oprichniki, his stoic eyes starring you down. Your body might be exhausted but your mind is still sharp enough to know that what this means so you quickly scramble to the side, your body hitting the wall in the process but you don't dare to make a sound, gaze flickering around until you find the General standing a few steps away, his dark grey eyes trained on you and your pitiful appearance. His gaze moves down your shape to inspect your kefta before he finally speaks, voice clear and calm. You still hear the underlying sharpness, the suspicion, despite the smoothness in his words.

The paranoia you felt an hour ago is clearly justified. He noticed your workload and will most definitely request to see what you're working on, especially after seeing you stumble around the hallways of the Little Palace.

"Are you alright, Durast?" He asks and you're not even surprised that he doesn't know your name despite the distrust he clearly holds for you.

Quickly nodding you press your body harder against the wall, the skin covering your shoulder blades hurting awfully, trapped between unyielding bone and stone wall, barely protected by the purple kefta, more of use against singular bullets than for comfort and protection against pressure.

"Yes moi soverenyi, everything is fine." You say quickly, forcing stability into your voice before tying your hardest to straighten out your back. "I'm just really tired. I haven't slept much in the past few weeks. I think I might've overworked myself a bit."

In the back of your mind an old memory of Baghra chastising you wakes up, her old voice loudly echoing through your consciousness as she scolds you.

"If you're gonna lie to me at least do me a favour and do it well. Liars always over-explain too much. Only mention enough information to assure the other person that you're not actively hiding something from them you stupid child."

Kirigans eyes do not leave you, his gaze calculating as it traces over your face, the stitching of your kefta and finally your arms and hands, hanging heavy and cold at your sides.

"Your hands are shaking." He points out and suddenly he's moving towards you, his movements too fast and too unexpected for you to dodge quickly. An echo of the feeling you get with Baghra, of that deep conviction that he will know what you've done if he gets too close to you crashes through your body like a wave but it's too late, his hands grabbing yours and lifting them up to get a better view of them.

You attempt to pull yourself out of his grasp but you can barely move your fingers at this point, giving up seconds later, your heartbeat rushing loudly in your ears. His eyes are too focused for your liking, carefully scanning your hands as if he knows that there's something for him to find, something off about your story. He doesn't believe you, not even a little bit.

A silent prayer to Ilya in chains, the man who became a saint for experimenting with magic, is all you can muster, unable to free yourself. Shit, even if your arms didn't feel like they're going to fall off any second, ripping your hands out of your Generals grasp would not only be rude, it would be disrespectful. You could get disciplined for such misdemeanour and it would probably only make him more suspicious of you and your experiments.

The Generals dark grey eyes move back to your face, so many questions clearly visible in his eyes that it takes your breath away for a second.

Is he trying to manipulate you?

Look at me. I have so many questions only you can answer. Don't you want to please me? Don't you want to please your General?

You shake your head lightly and he seems to take it as an answer to one of his questions, a frown appearing on his face before he lets go of your hands.

"Go to sleep. After you're rested please come to my quarters. I would like to talk about whatever project is taking up so much of your time. Perhaps we can organise a small team to support you. We can't have Grisha stumbling around the halls of the Little Palace like this. The king is going to assume I can't lead my soldiers well enough if he hears of this."

Nodding quickly, not trusting your voice to be stable enough for the usually expected yes, moi soverenyi, you try to take a step back, bumping into the wall with a wince before lowering your gaze to the floor to show respect. He waves his with his hand, dismissing you in the process, before continuing his path down the hallway.

When you finally stand in front of your room you force your hands back into movement to pull your key out of one of your many pockets to unlock the door, while silently asking yourself how the Generals hands could possibly be cold enough for the feeling to still be noticeable for you, despite the numb state of your arms.

Maybe that's why he always wears those gloves? His hands are just really, really cold?

Minutes after you fall into your bed, prepared to sleep the weird effects of the Merzost off, the General stands silently in his own quarters, staring at his hands as he realises that he not only foolishly touched you with his bare hands, he also didn't feel your powers pull on his amplification. No, you hadn't noticed anything at all and neither did he. He didn't amplify you when he touched you.

Slowly turning back towards his door, the same frown from before appears on his face, his mind deep in thought. Something about you is not right. Something has changed.

A mystery has revealed itself in the halls of his very own palace and for the first time in decades he has no idea what to do about it.

Part 2 - I have no time for confession

#darkling x reader #general kirigan x reader #the darkling imagine #shadow and bone #aleksander morozova x reader

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