VI / Lost Girls

Vera has to admit, she got a small amount of pleasure from the satisfaction of watching first Botkin berate Zoya for her unallowed use of her Summoner powers during the training, and later knowing that the Darkling was doing the same. Even if he probably only cared so much about it because she'd used it against Alina and not that she'd actually broken Botkin's rules.

She only felt a little bad about it when she had perfect view of Zoya returning with furious tears still visible on her beautiful face when she emerged from the large doors leasing to the council rooms and stormed out of the domed hall.

Eventually, when the sun was setting, Vera makes her way to the infirmary. She wasn't exactly sure why her feet were leading her here, but she found herself approaching Alina's bedside, the eyes of one of the Healers following her.

The girl blinks at her, surprise clearly written across her face as she sits takes one of the vacant chairs and sits down in it next to her.

Vera leans back, mustering Alina for a moment. She'd heard that the impact with the wall had broken one of her ribs on Alina's left side. Which also explained how she'd had looked like she had trouble breathing properly, or why she'd blacked out when they had carried her to the infirmary.

"You look better." She states. Although Alina still looked like roadkill, she did look better than she had when they'd carried her away - her injuries seemed to be completely gone, judging by the way she moved.

Alina gives her an unsure shrug in response. Another sign that she'd been entirely healed. Not that Vera had expected any different. "I feel fine."

"Hm."

Vera was not convinced. Even if Alina was not hurt anymore, Vera doubted she was really fooling anyone who cared to properly pay attention to her. It was obvious, maybe more to Vera than anyone else because she'd had experience with that very thing, that Alina had trouble summoning. If she even managed to do so at all.

It was evident in the permanent dark shadows under her eyes, her too-pale reflection. Even though she'd been here and training with Botkin for weeks now, she was hardly making any progress. Vera saw that her stamina during the drills had barley improved. She was still too slow. She wasn't gaining any muscle, or weight for that matter and tethered just on the side of too skinny that indicated a lack of food.

Because without using Grisha powers, this was what happened to them. Vera knew it all too well. She'd been that girl; she'd been like Alina for years of her life in Fjerda. Only when she arrived in the Little Palace and really began using her powers, that had changed.

It was like what her teacher had once said; a Grisha was a flame and using their powers was like giving the fire new sustenance to burn. Without it, they could never truly reach their potential. They would grow weaker and weaker over time, but with it they could thrive.

"Why are you here?" Alina says into the silence after a long moment. It doesn't sound like an accusation, it sounds curious. Like she's trying to figure her out.

Normally, that thought alone would make Vera's hackles rise, would make her redouble her efforts to keep those walls up. But, alas, she was here now and she could hardly just turn and leave.

Well, she could and she had done so before, but Vera was trying. So, she forced herself to stay.

"I wanted to check on you." Vera shrugs as she leans back in her chair. It's about as relaxed as Alina has ever seen her. Even now, her glacier eyes are alert and harsh and Alina knows without a doubt that they are filing away every tiny detail, every movement.

If a Fjerdan were here to kill her now, Vera would probably have him spotted and roasted before Alina ever noticed him, she thinks.

"Without Marie and Nadia here," Vera adds after a moment. "Or anyone else."

Alina tilts her head slightly. "Why?"

"Because they are annoying and exhausting to be around." Vera replies although she isn't quite sure that that's what Alina meant.

"You know, I think they say quite similar things about you," Alina admits with a small shrug.

Vera flashes her a wicked wolf smile. "Oh, I know."

Again, Alina gives her that look. The look Vera cannot quite figure out, no matter how much she tries to.

In the corner of her eyes, Vera can see the Healer take a few steps toward them. Probably to leave so Alina can rest. And, more because she agrees with that idea than listening to some stranger's command, Vera casts Alina a last look before she rises from her seat.

"You really should rest, you look like you need it." Vera points out and pauses. After a moment, she adds, "When you're fit to train again you won't do your training sessions in the morning with Botkin anymore. You'll do them with me."

She hadn't talked to Botkin about it yet, but she didn't think he'd have any big objections. Vera was as capable as teaching Alina the basic skills she was working on at the moment. And, she might likely have a higher chance of success considering that Botkin was not Grisha, unlike her. And Botkin, like any non-Grisha and most Grisha, did not know what it was like to be cut off from your powers. To have every single aspect of yourself, your body and your mind, suffer from that absence the way Alina was suffering right now.

The way Vera had suffered.

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As winter falls and the air gets more freezing, more reminiscent of the Fjerdan weather she'd been familiar with, Vera realizes that whatever she'd been telling herself about her new job, it was most definitely a punishment.

Maybe it had not been intended as one, but it was one nonetheless. The monotone weeks stretching on and on, the way she hardly left the Little Palace at all. That she did not have anything at all to do aside from training with Alina or Baghra or Botkin or listen to the other Grisha squawk and gossip during mealtimes or read in the library. It reminded her too much of her childhood in Fjerda. Of gilded cages and invisible shackles around her wrists.

Right now, during these long days that seemed to last for an infinity each, Vera almost would've preferred the Fold to the Little Palace. Just almost.

She wasn't entirely sure what the Darkling was waiting for until he'd decided that Alina would not need her anymore to have Vera watching her the entire time, especially with Genya, who Vera was convinced was spying on Alina for the Darkling despite never having admitted so out loud, but Vera could not wait for it to come. Whatever it was.

At least something good that came out of the assignment to shadow Alina Starkov was that Alina had one day invited her to join her and Genya in Alina's room when they ate whatever Genya had been able to swipe from someone she'd tailored or from the Grand Palace.

Vera had not showed up the first, or second, or even the fourth time. But, one night, she'd been so lonely and had not known what to do with Fedyor still away and had been bored out of her mind to such a point that she had marched up to Alina's room in the floor above hers and had knocked rather aggressively on the door.

It had taken something from her she hadn't quite known had been there, and she was not quite sure what it was to show up the next time with actual excitement.

Now, Vera was seated in one of the chairs as the snow fell outside and watched Genya and Alina as she turned and twirled that Grisha steel knive Botkin had given to her years ago. The first knive she'd ever gotten for only herself. Genya lounged across Alina's bed eating the almond candies between them with Alina sitting against the headrest of her bed, a beaming smile across her face as she showed them the circle sunlight in her palms, it was wavering slightly, and the movement created beautiful slivers of patterns across her face.

She hadn't told them why or what had changed, but something had. Even if she hadn't heard the excited whispers that Alina had been at the Summoner's practice today, which Vera had forgone simply because she had not been in the mood for it and the entire thing hadn't really given her any indication that she'd actually learn something there that she did not know already. So, she had spent her afternoon in the library.

When she had entered the domed hall for the dinner, she had first heard the whispers. Then, she had seen the bright, excited look in Alina's face. That would've told her everything without any conversations she might have overheard.

And, Djel, Alina had an appetite.

Vera hadn't realized she actually cared about her on some level, until she felt that small, traitorous silver of relief trickle through her at the sight of Alina eating instead of picking at her food. And even now, she was still eating a piece of the candies Genya had brought every now and then.

Even now, as the sunlight flared out of existence and Alina listened to Genya reporting whatever new gossip she'd picked up from the queen and the Kerch ambassador who'd been at the Grand Palace today, she could see the healthy glow in her cheeks. Already, the absence of the sick paleness in her skin and the subsiding dark shadows under her eyes stick out to Vera.

She wonders if this is what she'd looked like, too, after those handful days in the black coach. When, whenever they'd stopped at night and the Darkling had instructed her to light the branches for their fire. Vera hadn't had a grasp on her fire yet, and it had felt like misjudging her own balance over and over again. But she'd actually used her powers, even if just a bit, every da. And, by the time they'd arrived in Os Alta, Vera had gone from feeling nauseous at the mere sight of food to looking forward to every meal. To, for the first time for as long as she could remember, have a grumbling stomach. Not have nightmare.

And... Vera realized with a jolt of undiluted shock that the feeling spreading in her chest was pride.

Pride for Alina who'd finally, at last, found her own light. Who, finally, smiled like she meant it.

Maybe, she thinks with the same amount of shock and surprise that had paralyzed her just a heartbeat earlier as Genya and Alina laughed at something Genya had told them about the queen's lunch, one day far away I might just let someone other than Fedyor in.