This has been bugging me for the past week, and I just knew I had to write it. :<
Her legs gave out even before she could reach him.
The aftermath of the war still hung heavily in the air, the stench of blood and smoke and earth invading Zoya’s senses, but her attention was solely focused on the boy lying on the ground just several yards away.
And he looked deathly still.
Zoya willed herself to stand up on her feet again and continued her way towards Nikolai. She ignored the panic that started to cloud the logical part of her mind as she crashed down beside him because Zoya Nazalensky did not panic at the most crucial times in her life.
But now, seeing the boy—the man—she had grown to love and care for so much for the past few years dying on the very land that he had protected with everything he had, Zoya realized things she did not want to admit out loud.
“Nikolai,” she said, letting her hand come up to the side of his face to turn him to her. She tried to ignore how the lack of warmth of Nikolai brought her mind to a panicking mess. His pulse wasn’t there. He wasn’t breathing. “Lantsov, damn it. Open your eyes.”
No, not yet, she told herself. She wouldn’t give him up just like that. She wouldn’t.
Zoya gritted her teeth as she reached down to whatever was left of her strength to call upon the blue glow that was starting to form in her hands.
Zoya’s putting her own life at risk too, she heard an all too familiar voice in her head as she remembered when she was once in the same position, back when she was helping a bunch of proper thieves.
She doesn’t strike me as the type.
Nikolai hadn’t doubted her capabilities. He never did. Even if she had at some point, she always knew he never did.
Zoya slammed her hands on his chest, feeling his body react under the pressure of it. Nikolai’s body thudded back against the ground, and she put her fingers against the spot under his neck for a pulse.
“Damn it,” Zoya hissed as she gathered up her power once more. She felt her vision get blurry in frustration, looking down at the pale face of her king. “I swear to all the saints if you survive this, I’m going to kill you myself.”
She was beginning to feel desperate, Zoya knew, and her remaining strength was slowly dissipating into nothing.
But she still refused to give up on Nikolai.
There were still too many things she hadn’t told him yet. Too many things.
Zoya tried to think about his optimism, how he had never seemed to fail to think that everything will be alright, that they would always find a way to fix the problems that came crashing to them.
Because it was Ravka, the ever-more-bad-news-to-come-Ravka, and Nikolai was ready to lay down everything for it.
She slammed her palms to his chest for the second time, and his body reacted once again. She waited a few agonizing seconds before checking his pulse again.
When she felt that there still wasn’t, she gritted her teeth in frustration and anger. “Come on, Lantsov. You’re stronger than this,” she growled, clutching onto the collar of his undershirt in a fist. “Not like this.”
Zoya knew that a third shock would be dangerous, even at the lowest intensity of her abilities. But she was willing to try another time, if it meant bringing him back.
Especially if it meant possibly bringing him back.
She started to draw from her strength again, but her hands had already started shaking and her whole body felt bone-tired. The blue glow in her hands was already too faint, too faint to be seen if one were to look even at a short distance.
“No, not like this,” she rasped, staring at her still-shaking hands and hoping that if she willed herself hard enough, she’d be able to summon lighting one more time.
It was too late. She couldn’t save someone important to her. Just like she couldn’t save her aunt back then.
It was then she felt her face become wet, and she realized that tears had gone free and fell down in continuous bidding. The act had become strange to her, she didn’t remember when she last cried—she had steeled herself enough to any emotions that might affect her line of thinking and decision making.
You’d give him up so readily?
She heard Elizaveta’s old words in her mind suddenly, and she felt another wave of determination surge through her.
Zoya clenched a fist and slammed it down to his chest. “Wake up.” Thud. “You’re stronger than this, come on, damn it.” Thud. “Damn it, Nikolai, Ravka needs you.” Another thud, and her tears didn’t seem to stop from flowing. Please, not like this. “Saints, I need you.”
Her fist came back down one last time, and she released a sob that she had been holding on since she first saw his body from afar. The thought of completely losing him hadn’t crossed her mind even once before, even though she had sent him off to find a bride and she knew she would keep a far more distance to him than she had before, because she knew they’d still be who they were. The ones who kept each other marching.
The king and his general.
Sturmhond and the Storm Witch.
Now that thought hit her full force, and she absorbed the impact with everything in her. “Come back to me,” she whispered brokenly, resting her forehead on his chest, and continued to sob.
He was gone. Nikolai, the one who fought tooth and nail for his country on the verge of falling, the one who always saw the good in everything, the one who understood Zoya more than anyone despite her rough edges and her sharp tongue, was gone.
There were still things Zoya wished to say (admit), and she had hoped he would survive the chaos for her to be able to be honest to him. Even just this once.
She loved him. She loved him more than she was willing to admit. She had been alright with the fact that she’d just watch him from the distance when he declared his engagement with the Shu princess and that Nikolai could never love someone like Zoya.
It had been the thought she instilled in her mind, and she had hoped that after the war with the Fjerdans she’d be honest to him.
But that time would never come. Not when—
“—aints,” a soft rasp cut through the thoughts in her head, so soft that she thought she might just had been imagining things.
Zoya snapped up in an instant, her heart in her throat, and blue eyes met with hazel ones.
Nikolai blinked, his eyes looking a bit distant before sharpening at the sight of her. “Zoya?” he managed to say, and Zoya could only stare as felt her tears falling down her face again. His eyes flashed with worry, then he was slowly starting to sit up with a wince evident on his face. “Are you alright? Were you hurt?”
All thoughts and restraints slipped from Zoya’s mind as she threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders tightly, both of her thighs coming to rest on both sides of his hips as she settled herself on his lap. She heard him grunt a little, and felt his arms around her a mere second later, strong and comforting and warm at the same time, and she buried her face on the side of his neck. He smelled of blood and sweat and all-Nikolai.
“I feel like I’ve been run over by a coach,” Nikolai said weakly, his arms tightening around her. “Did one just come by?”
Zoya half-laughed and half-sobbed in his neck, relishing the familiar air of having Nikolai around her again. She pulled away a bit a few moments later, meeting his eyes again and that moment she knew she would never get tired of looking at them.
“Hi,” Nikolai breathed, his brows slightly furrowed as his eyes searched her face. He brought a hand up, his thumb gently brushing her temple. “You look like a mess. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
Of course he would ask her if she’s okay. Even though he had been the one who had been dead just moments ago, he’d always think of others before himself.
Zoya didn’t know what came to her, she just knew that she was done holding back, that she was being selfish, and she just crashed her mouth into his. The air around her felt electric, the warmth of his lips sending shivers down her spine, and everything focused on the man in front of her.
Nikolai was breathing. He was real. He was alive.
A hand came to the back of her neck, and Nikolai angled her head to the side and kissed her deeper, the act so intimate that she felt her skin burn with want and need for him that she had suppressed for a long time.
Only when she felt her face wet with tears again did she pull away reluctantly, her hands on the sides of his face and her forehead on his, as he felt his lips kiss their way to the corner of her mouth, and to her jaw.
“You were dead,” she said, the words tasting bitter in her mouth, one of her hands creeping up to the back of his head and holding him closer. “You were dead. You weren’t breathing.” She paused as her breath got caught in her throat and another wave of sob threatened to hit. “You were dead.”
Zoya felt his lips trail kisses up to her temple and lingered there, his other arm tightening its hold around her waist. “I’m sorry,” Nikolai murmured against her skin. “I’m still here.” He pulled away to look in her eyes. A hand came to cup her face, his thumb caressing the tears on her cheek gently. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I love you,” Zoya blurted out, and Nikolai froze. “I didn’t realize how much until I thought I lost you—”
His lips drowned out the next words she was about to say, and she just clutched him tighter instead and kissed him back with much fervor she could muster. They stayed like that for a long moment, kissing amidst the aftermath of the war around them.
“You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to hear that from you,” Nikolai said when they pulled away later, when the need of air became necessary. “I love you.”
Zoya looked into his eyes and saw the raw honesty behind the tiredness of them, and she closed her eyes as she rested her forehead to his. “Don’t scare me like that again.”
Nikolai chuckled, the sound warming Zoya all throughout. “My ruthless Zoya, I’ll always come back to you.”
