XXII / Where Is Your Home, Vagabond?

"CAN HE BE trusted?" Nikolai's voice slowly seeps into her mind, the process sluggish and slow and it feels too distant. Like they're under water, watching the ripples from above.

"He's a deserter," a male voice Vera vaguely recognized as one of Nikolai's soldiers replies in a tone that isn't at all friendly.

Vera stiffens.

Fedyor's hold around her tightens in response as grumbling on both sides of the gate rises.

There's a pause, then, "Move everyone back and make sure none of those footmen get it in their heads to start shooting. I suspect they lack for excitement out here amid the fruit trees."

"What about him?" Tolya's voice.

There's a pause. Then, without answering, Vera hears footsteps walking away from them on the gravel. Nikolai must've given Tolya some sort of silent command because nobody comes to drag Fedyor out again as Tolya begins his march to the gate to take care of the situation.

In front of her, Fedyor is watching her intently, his expression a mixture of relief and worry beneath the tension she can see in his shoulders, his jaw, before he reaches up and gently brushes away the tears staining her cheeks with one hand. Vera's sure she must look horrible- blotchy face and red eyes and tears all over her. But she doesn't care. Can't bring herself to care. Not even about the fact that she just fell apart in the open for everyone to witness.

Because Fedyor is here. Fedyor is here.

"I don't remember the last time I saw you cry like this," the Heartrender's voice is quiet. Words only meant for the two of them and nobody else.

Vera scowls up at him, just a little. The ghost of her usual expression, but it's something, Fedyor decides. "Shut up," she says and feels a little like a little child but her mind can't form any coherent thoughts because he's here. He's here and not burned to a crisp by angry peasants or hanged by First Army soldiers and he's safe and healthy and in her grasp.

Fedyor laughs softly and the sound feels like it takes stones from her shoulders, their weight lifting just a little more of the darkness and agony and crippling worry from her chest. It feels like she can breathe a little easier for the first time since the destruction of Novokribirsk. Since Grisha became hunted in Ravka once again. Since they became the enemy here, too.

Vera reaches up and rests her palm against his cheek. "You're okay?" She asks under her breath because this is their little bubble and it belongs only to them. Nobody else has a right to this.

Fedyor nods, but there's a weariness to him that wasn't there the last time she saw him. "As good as can be expected. You?"

"As good as can be expected," she echoes. The words feel like a lie. They're lying to each other for the others benefit, pretending that their world isn't breaking apart at the seams. But at least, Vera thinks in the safety of her thoughts, they have each other again now.

Fedyor sends a glance over Vera's head, watching something behind her and at last, the world around them registers to Vera's mind again. And with it the noises of people arguing, talking. The commotion they must've caused when the guards opened the gate for Fedyor.

And just Fedyor, Vera notices when she steals a look around him from where she is still tucked against the Heartrender's body.

"Your boy doesn't seem too happy to see me here," Fedyor says quietly against her hair and Vera jolts a little.

"My boy?" She repeats and even to her own ears her voice sounds all wrong. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The barely audible snort Fedyor lets out in response tells her he doesn't believe her words even for a single moment and at last, Vera untangles herself completely from Fedyor's arms and turns to where Nikolai and Alina are talking quietly, their attention fixed on the Grisha outside the gate. And Fedyor.

Before Vera can stop herself, and ugly sort of protectiveness rears its head in her, a monster lazily opening one eye with a yawn.

Over her dead body will she part from Fedyor. She'll leave with him before she watches them send him away from the safety of the duke's home.

Never mind that she was just on her way out.

"I'll be right back," Vera says to Fedyor, before she makes her way over to join the two. Even before she ever started taking one step in front of the other, long before she is in hearing distance of their conversation, she knows what it's about. It doesn't surprise her. She agrees with them, too. It's only logical. It's necessary.

Still, that thing in her bristles at the insinuation against Fedyor.

She is still trying to keep herself in check to not choke the soldier calling Fedyor a traitor in a voice that suggests he is worth less than the worm in the dirt at his feet with her bare hands.

"Nevsky is right," Nikolai is saying quietly to Alina. "Grisha or not, their first loyalty should have been to the King. They left their posts. Technically, they're deserters."

It takes all in Vera not to react to that. Not to burn something or to laugh. Loyalty to King Alexander III, to that leech of a man, so that they would keep their posts prime for lynching by First Army soldiers and angry villagers for something most Grisha had no part in?

Never mind that in running, in leaving, they'd avoided a fight. Vera holds no doubt that if Fedyor had wanted to, he could've used his Grisha abilities to kill anyone coming at him.

Running hadn't just meant leaving their post, it'd also meant not partaking in the bloodshed they could prevent.

"That doesn't make them traitors," Alina retorts.

"The real question is whether they're spies."

"So what do we do with them?" Alina asks, and Vera isn't sure if anyone notices it, but suddenly, the Sun Summoner sounds tired to her ears.

"We could arrest them, have them questioned," Nikolai suggests just as Vera reaches them and her glacier eyes harden, ice bleeding through her irises at the suggestion. They can try to lock Fedyor up.

"No," Vera says before she can stop herself as she stops next to him and Alina, who is toying with her sleeve, her dark eyebrows drawn together in a frown. They turn to her and Vera tries to keep her face neutral. "We're not just locking them up. It's too likely that it wouldn't go over well," she adds because she has to say something.

"We can't just open the gate for them without any precautions either," Nikolai argues.

"That's not what I'm saying," Vera replies, her hackles rising. Again, she reminds herself she needs to paly this right. She needs to keep her head in the game. This isn't a task for the soldier, but a politician. She knows how to play the game of the courts, of politics- but she hasn't donned this mask in such a long time, it feels icky. Like a second skin that doesn't quite fit right.

"Don't we want the Grisha to come back?" Alina, who has been looking between them, says at last. "If we arrest everyone who returns, I won't have much of an army to lead."

"Remember, you'll be eating with them, working with them, sleeping under the same roof," Nikolai says, his eyes back on Alina.

"And they could all be working for the Darkling." Alina trails off, her eyes going from Nikolai, to Vera, to Fedyor, to the Grisha beyond the gate.

Calm, calm, calm. The words chant in Vera's head as she tries her best not to grit her teeth together, to keep her fingers from curling into fists. Be smart.

She understands where they're coming from, she does. Vera knows in her very bones that Fedyor would never be a spy for the Darkling. But Nikolai doesn't know Fedyor, Alina doesn't know Fedyor. Nobody knows Fedyor like she does, Vera thinks most days. If she were in their position, she wouldn't trust Fedyor, either. Not a single heartbeat.

But she isn't in their position.

"What do you think?" Alina adds and Vera isn't entirely sure who Alina is referring to- her or Nikolai.

Nikolai is the one to reply. "I don't think these Grisha are any more or any less trustworthy than the ones waiting at the Little Palace."

It's not a particularly promising answer, but at least it's not to round everyone up, throw them in a dungeon and torture them until the end of days on the chance that there is a spy amongst them and breaks.

It's also the truth.

Alina gives Nikolai a side-look. "That's not encouraging."

Vera blows out a slow breath. "But it's the truth. We have to assume that any Grisha, or soldier or politician, or servant we do not trust completely could be playing us at any given moment," she points out. "Besides, the communication in the Little and Grand Palace is monitored closely on any given day. It'll be much more so now. It'd be hard for a spy to keep up a steady communication with a spy from outside the walls, much less use them to his advance."

Alina nods slowly, more to herself than either of them. She looks at Vera, a question and answer in her eyes all at once and some sort of decision passes over her features. "Alright. I'll speak to Fedyor, and only him. The rest can camp outside the dacha tonight and join us on the way into Os Alta tomorrow."

"You're sure?"

"I doubt I'll be sure of anything ever again, but my army needs soldiers."

"Very good," Nikolai says after a moment. "Just be careful who you trust."

Aline gives Nikolai a flat look he is pretty sure she has learned from Vera somewhere along the way without even noticing it. "I will," she says before making her way back to Tamar and Mal, leaving Vera and Nikolai standing next to each other alone.

For the first time since the gardens, Vera has a moment for herself, to breathe, to think. To realize that something fundamental has shifted between them tonight. And she isn't quite sure what to make of it.

Just a few minutes ago, she'd been convinced that the only way forward was to leave this group behind. To leave Nikolai and Alina behind.

And she still is but... but Nikolai Lanstov kissed her. Kissed her.

Or she kissed him.

But it doesn't matter who first started the kissing because the other had kissed back.

It doesn't solve a thing. It shouldn't change a thing, either, but her mind is still reeling from it all.

For a split second, Vera's glacier eyes meet Nikolai's hazel ones and the worlds stutters to a stop. In this one look Vera is back in the garden, surrounded by bushes and fountain, tucked into the safety of the dark. Nikolai's hands on her. Around her. Nikolai's lips on her own...

Alina isn't who I want to my queen.

What do you want, Vera?

She takes in a quiet, sharp breath before she takes a step away from Nikolai, her lips still tingling with the memory of his touch. And another.

You. I want you.

What has she done?

━━━━━

It's deep into the night when Fedyor finally returns to Vera's room after talking to Alina for hours. Vera had brought Fedyor over to the room Alina had decided to have their meeting in, but she left them be. She knew if there was anything she had to know or either of them felt like sharing, they would talk to her. At least, Fedyor would. Alina might. And she had the feeling that this conversation needed to happen between the two and without her meddling.

So, as difficult as it was, Vera had brought Fedyor to the room while Fedyor gave her a brief summary of what had happened in Sikursk where he'd been stationed after the Darkling expanded the Fold. It'd been mostly what Vera had expected him to tell her. After the news had reached his outpost, the First Army soldiers had turned on the Grisha, pulling them out of their beds, finding them guilty in sham trials that would've never even considered to show any sort of mercy to the Second Army members.

It fills her with a sort of pride she can't quite put into words when Fedyor tells her he'd helped the Grisha there escape. That they'd chosen to take their wounded and leave instead of shedding more blood.

Vera knows not every Grisha did the same. That there'd been fights and massacres from both sides, First and Second Army, following the destruction of Novokribirsk. She doesn't know what she would have done- chosen peace or met blow with blow. There's a violent predator in her that would've balked at the idea of running.

But Fedyor isn't like her. He was a Heartrender, a Bloodletter, but he was a man of peace at heart, too. Her constant, her anchor, her counter piece.

For Fedyor, she would've left without argument.

For Fedyor, she would've killed them all.

When Fedyor returns to the room, the tension that had crept back into Vera's body over the past hours separated from the Heartrender, relaxes a little again. She knows that the fact that she'd suggested that Fedyor stay in her room tonight must've looked like two spies meeting up to conspire how to best screw them over to the First Army soldiers, but she can't bring herself to care. She doesn't want to be parted from Fedyor any longer than necessary tonight. From the way his shoulder's sagged just a little from relief, she knows he shares the sentiment.

And then she remembers the look Fedyor had given her right before he'd entered the room Alina was awaiting him in.

She knows Fedyor enough to know that his eyes promised that there'd be a conversation between them. Whether about the fact that she wasn't wearing her kefta- which had probably tipped Fedyor off about any number of things- and was running around with a hood and a packed bag, or about Nikolai, Vera doesn't know.

Probably both.

"I don't want to talk about it," Vera blurts out before she can stop herself.

Fedyor's eyebrows rise up a little. "Which part?"

"Uh," she trails off, deciding it was probably best to not stay quiet. Fedyor knew her too well to buy into any of her attempts to lie. Anything could be used against her. Even her silence, but at least he'd have a harder time looking through it. Vera thinks.

"Okay," Fedyor says slowly, his gaze focused on her intently. "Then let's start with why Nikolai Lantsov, the prince of Ravka, was looking at me like I just took away his favorite toy at the gate tonight."

Vera makes a choking sound, her eyes going wide. "Excuse me?" She wheezes, even as heat crawls up her throat.

He gives her an I-can-see-right-through-you stare. "You heard me."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Vera says, feeling like a liar.

Fedyor doesn't look at all impressed by her reaction. Or deterred. "You do." He replies, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "I do. Nikolai Lanstov does. Saints, everyone else probably does, too."

"You're wrong." Vera tries half-heartedly, because she is still half replaying that moment in the gardens in her mind.

He gives her that stare again and Vera blows out a breath, looking away.

"We kissed tonight," she mumbles under her breath like a little child caught up in a lie.

She doesn't even think Fedyor heard her, or understood the words, until his eyes widen a little. "Huh?"

"Uh..."

"You- he- tonight?"

It's the act and not the person that just rendered Fedyor speechless, Vera knows. She'd told him about Nikolai and that day in the gardens of Os Alta when they first talked to each other six years ago, and the awkward kiss she gave him four years ago before he left and the one he gave her in return. Fedyor knows everything about that little teenage daydream she'd been plagued with about Nikolai Lanstov.

It's the fact that Vera doesn't go for feelings, period. She's never really had any lovey-feelings that makes all the other girls her age gush over boys and girls and kissing and going out. She's never been like that. She's always been secluded to others in so many aspects. Vera Alekson doesn't form emotional connections necessary to become a giggling teenage girl.

Vera lets out a soft sigh, seeming to deflate a little as she looks back at Fedyor. "I can't talk about this," she whispers into the room before she adds, "Not tonight. Not when it's so fresh. I can't... I can't think. Not about this. Not with everything else. I will," she promises and it's the truth. "Just not tonight." Her throat bobs a little. "Please."

After a long moment, Fedyor nods. "Alright." He concedes and she knows it's the last word that convinced him, the raw truth in her voice, in her eyes.

"Alright." Vera echoes.

Slowly, Fedyor makes over his way to one of the chairs in the room, letting himself sink down on it before he points at the bag discarded on the floor, at the hood, at Vera's clothes with his chin. "You were leaving, weren't you?"

He doesn't need to ask why. He knows.

Vera nods, feeling a little helpless, ashamed. She can't quite voice the truth.

Fedyor rubs his palm over his face, scrubbing along his jaw and suddenly, he looks so tired. Like the exhaustion is about to run him over and he is still upright thanks to nothing but pure will. "Do you still want to leave?" With him here now, with Nikolai. He doesn't voice it, but Vera can hear the words unspoken between them.

The answer should be simple. Yes. This changes nothing. Her situation is still the same. There is only one way forward.

But the word doesn't come past her lips.

"I don't know," Vera breathes and there's a knot burning in her throat.

Fedyor nods, before something in his face settles, calms with determination. "I'd like to stay," he says. "But I know why you think you can't. I understand, Vera. And if you feel like you can't stay, we'll go. Whether it's tonight, tomorrow, in a week, in a year. Just say the word." He pauses. "But I think you and I both know that you won't be safer from them anywhere else, either. And I know that you don't want to leave these people behind either."

Vera looks away, unable to stand the sight of him with the weight of his word bearing down on her.

"And I think that when you admit the truth, when you stop running, you'll be able to change the face of this war." He adds and Vera's eyes snap back to him.

"No," she croaks out. "No."

"It's why the Darkling kept you so close. Why he didn't hesitate to bring you with him, either." Why he risked staying in the Fold longer to get her out alive, a voice inside her head adds. Fedyor doesn't know about it, but Vera does. Djel, Vera knows. "It's your choice, your decision." Fedyor continues. "We do what you want in this. I'll follow you to Novyi Zem or Os Alta if that's what you want." He reaches out and squeezes her shoulder. "And I'll follow you there whether you want to go there as just another Inferni, or not."

AUTHOR'S NOTE
a little easter egg: the title of the chapter comes from the song "vagabond" by tommee profitt & FJØRA and i think it really fits vera's ~vibe~ right now/during this part of her journey. also i really wrote this chapter in one go and now my hand hurts 🤡 but welcome to a land that's called denial!! it's vera's favorite

aNYWAYS here's some ✨obligatory bad meme content✨ as a peace offering: