Shadow and Bone AU where the Darkling finds Alina when she’s a child; he adopts her, brings her to the little palace, kicking and screaming and trying her best to attack anyone that lets her get too close to the door. She screams for Mal at night. He’s not sure what Mal is, but he hates the way his chest aches when he hears Alina sob when she thinks the General is asleep. He has David search and bring back an equally scrappy young orphan boy, Alina refuses to let go of his hand even when the General prise their hands apart she snarls at him and light fizzles on her fingertips.
Feydor laughs the entire time he tells Alina and Mal tales of his training and Ivan howls with laughter after dinner, when Alina firmly assures both of them she’ll outrank them after her first session. Alina likes them the best and always grins when they’re her guards, the advise her to avoid the library, making comments about how it’s not for the likes of her. The General has to fight even harder against Alina’s love for knowledge than her love of Mal.
Genya doesn’t say much, just watches wide eyed from behind the doorway, Alina always invites her to read, she only agrees when Mal’s gone. Mal talks with David and they play often, Mal ducking and weaving between the towering machines the fabrikator’s use. Alina connects this to Genya’s visits and she loudly declares a field trip the next time they’re reading together, Feydor and Ivan dutifully follow, coraling an suddenly terrified Genya towards the fabrikator’s workshops, as if Alina’s hand wasn’t enough of a steel trap. Mal almost immediately pulls Alina away, David hovering next to the door. he and Genya look up and back to the floor fifteen times until Feydor speaks for Genya asking about things for tailors, that the queens tailor was looking for something, that Genya could deliver it. David leaps at this, pulling Genya by her hand and almost shoving various things he’s been working on into her arms. Genya’s never been given a gift before.
Baghra is delighted to have Alina train with her, she happily lets Mal, Genya and David come along, if they all learn anything it’s that the General who’s taken them in hated training more than them, and got bad marks in ‘helping others’ any attempts to tease the General leaves him scowling more than normal.
As it happens, with every precious thing in the General’s life, it is taken from him, not by an army, or an ambush, but by a group from Ketterdam, a travelling circus, a team of thieves, they’ve heard he keeps jewels in the palace and they want them. What they get is a child like them who can spill the very sun from her fingers, a boy who’s never gotten the concept of wait into his head, another boy who takes one look at the smoke bombs and grins like he’s been given a gift, and the girl who watches their faces before twisting her features into their own for a second.
They sneak out to the festival together, they have fun, they enjoy playing, until it’s slightly too dark, until the forest looms a little too close and the palace is a little too far to run to. Until the kids that brought them out grin a little too intensely, until one grabs Alina’s arm and she knows what this means, Mal does too. David’s arm breaks when he tries to push Genya away, Genya scream until she just sobs when one of them pins her down and laughs.
When the black falls over everything, when there’s no concept of themselves beyond their own thoughts, when they can’t see their own movements only then does Alina call out, tears on her face as she curls around her friends, reaching out to the dark hulking creature that folds itself over onto them.
“папа“ The darkness reaches back cradling her and comforting her until Ivan and Feydor arrive.
