#v. i am not ruined. i am ruination. ( canon timeline: ruin and rising ) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dekoranevich · 3 years

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@eterneaty said: ❝ Maybe I am making all the wrong choices. ❞ - from alina! ( the cruel prince sentence starters | accepting )

There is something precious, she thinks, about a friendship that makes room for insecurity and fear. Vulnerability isn’t easy — not for herself, Genya knows, and nor for Alina. Then again, Alina’s stakes are higher ( much higher ); saviors and saints are rarely allowed the privilege of discomfort or unease or of simply not knowing what to do.

Unconsciously, she brings her fingers up to run along one of the raised scars along her jaw. Wrong choices have consequences. She knows that much as well as anyone.

Genya clears her throat, her remaining eye lifting to the ceiling above them. “David said that on your first day back at the Little Palace, you split the ceiling and rather imperiously declared an end to herring breakfasts,” she says dryly. “I wish I could have seen it. You had no idea what you were doing then and you did it anyway. Why is this any different?”

It’s different this time because Alina couldn’t leave the skiff in the Fold. It’s different this time because Alina could escape the battle but she couldn’t escape the aftermath, the weight of every death that might have been prevented had she chosen differently, had she somehow known more, known better. The Kettle is almost painfully warm around them, but she takes Alina’s hand in her own all the same.

“You’re doing what needs to be done,” she says finally. “If it were easy to do, you’d be — ” Wrong. Not Alina, not her Alina, her friend, her ally. She’d be the Apparat, she’d be the King, she’d be the Darkling, any of the people who revel in having power and holding it above the lowly and the weak. There are moments when she thinks that perhaps the faithful are right. She’s never been particularly religious, but for Alina, she could be.

“Now, come here,” she says, voice firm but mirthful, even sweet. “The dark circles under your eyes have dark circles. They’ll start calling you the Patron Saint of Insomnia if you keep this up.”

#eterneaty #eterneaty ( alina starkov )#v. i am not ruined. i am ruination. ( canon timeline: ruin and rising )#(love u thank u for sending stuff in cannot wait to ruin ur life with genyalina content)

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dekoranevich · 3 years

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@eterneaty said: ❝ Only idiots aren’t scared of things that are scary. ❞ - from zoya! ( the cruel prince sentence starters | accepting )

"Of course,” Genya says with a nonchalance she doesn’t feel, “but perhaps we should reconsider what you call scary."

Once, she’d hated Zoya’s quick wit and sharp tongue, the way she could locate any weakness and strike too quickly for anyone to defend themselves before they were wounded; once, she’d hated that there was someone who could make her feel so weak. She’s grateful for it now. No one else will call her an idiot with that inimitable blend of amusement and long-suffering indulgence. No one else will crack jokes about her scars and make her feel like a person again, rather than a collection of traumas and wounds that never quite seem to heal right.

She turns her good eye to Zoya and she offers up an approximation of a sympathetic smile, one that would do even Zoya proud. She’s getting her bite back. She thinks it’s thanks more to Zoya than anyone else.

“A megalomaniacal warlord with a penchant for unspeakable brutality, no problem. Zoya hardly minds. Saints, she’ll berate anyone who’s too afraid to stand against certain death, but she has all the sympathy in the world for a few whimpering pilgrims afraid of a girl with a few scars.” Her eye twinkles with mischief. It feels good to have this sort of banter again. “Unless what you’re really afraid of is that I’ll tell you that your hair looks deader than the Genuine Fingerbones of Sankta Alina and that your split ends have split ends...? Don’t worry. I can fix it, if you can be brave.”

#eterneaty #eterneaty ( zoya nazyalensky )#v. i am not ruined. i am ruination. ( canon timeline: ruin and rising )

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dekoranevich · 3 years

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@mournres | NIKOLAI LANTSOV ( plotted starter )

Her hands are shaking. They won’t stop. The worst of it has passed by now — the tightness in her chest, the pounding of her blood in her ears, the blurring of her vision — and all that’s left to show for it is the quiver in her fingers, and she fists her hands in the fabric of the coat she wears, too-big and sagging around her shoulders but a comfort in the cold.

Be careful of powerful men. How many times will she fail to take her own advice? Every scar she bears is a reminder that everyone lies, no matter what they promise her in return for her loyalty ( and that’s the worst of it, she thinks: the Darkling knew that he was the only one in the world she trusted ). And she knows better than to trust Lantsov men, or to imagine that any of them might have her best interests at heart —

— but there had been a hard, fierce look to him, and in those moments she had truly believed he might finish the job she started. In those moments she understood why Alina was always so cautious with him. ( It’s not the fear that he’ll be like his father, his brother, the Darkling, anyone, everyone who’s laid eyes on her and thought her a pretty thing, then a broken thing. It’s the fear that he is exactly as he seems. )

It’s a wonder she catches him alone but she doesn’t stop to marvel at it for long. Instead, she reaches a scarred hand towards him, her fingers only barely reaching his sleeve. She clears her throat, thinks of the hundred, thousand things she wants to say. She knows thank you should be the first. Instead, all she can manage is a rough, quiet —

“ — why?”

#mournres #mournres ( nikolai lantsov )#thread: mournres001 #v. i am not ruined. i am ruination. ( canon timeline: ruin and rising )#(i love him i love him the best and most important thing anyone does for genya is this right here and i WEEP every time i read it)

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