I would like a newly reunited Helnik figuring out what their new, non-child-soldier winter traditions are going to be plz and thnx
The condensation on the grimy windowpane drips slowly onto the scarred wooden sill, the Ketterdam winter light slants like iron and frost from the high garret windows, and as she sits on the bed and watches Matthias wrestle with the embers in the dirty fireplace, Nina wonders timidly if she should get up and help him. Not that he needs it, not in the least. Aside from the general ferocious competence, she can't fathom how anyone could grow up in the frozen boneyard of Fjerda and not know how to make a decent fire. Of course, it's not as if Ravkan winters are a basket of roses, but Fjerda has always seemed much colder to her, in any number of ways. Yet it's the principle of the thing, one of the thousand tiny struggles and questions she's been left with ever since their fraught reunion and Matthias's eventful extraction from Hellgate. Does he want her help, or would it seem patronizing, pointless, stupid?
Uncharacteristically paralyzed with indecision, Nina doesn't move until Matthias utters a sound of triumph and gets to his feet, regarding the restored fire in the hearth with satisfaction. Saints, this is excruciating. They've been shut up in the attic for two days, waiting out the aftermath of the prison break, and Nina has a feeling it will either repair their bond in a surprising fashion or sunder it for good. Kaz probably also wants to see if they're going to kill each other before he really commits to anything, or a further employment of their services. For which it's hard to blame him, but --
"There," Matthias says. He doesn't turn around, but his voice is likewise somewhat less cold than before. "That's better."
"Yes," Nina says, after a fraught pause. She watches the glow limn the fine blond hairs on his arms, the scruff of his beard, the back of his neck, the roughness and the scars that she doesn't remember from before, which must be another poisoned gift of Hellgate. She doesn't want to ask too closely, even though she should. They've spent much of the time so far like this, in lapses and pauses, walking on eggshells and flashes of guilt and anger alike. He knows he should be grateful to her and the Crows for getting him out, but when it seems like just another manipulation, another necessity, using him worse than Jarl Brum ever did and not even having the decency to admit it --
"Matthias," Nina says convulsively. His name tastes odd in her mouth, sharp and dry, and he looks up with a bit of a start. Do you hate me, will you hate me forever -- the only question she wants to ask, the only one that seems to matter, but she can't get her tongue around it. Instead, as he looks at her expectantly and her words fail, she gropes for an acceptable, less-world-ending alternative. "It's almost the Winter Fete," she says, as if what either of them really have on their mind is the holidays. "Is there -- do you want to do anything for it?"
Matthias's mouth twitches in something almost like amusement, but he duly ponders the question, more than it deserves. She can't fathom what a celebration might be like in Fjerda, or even if they allow such things; it seems like it must entail hours of prayers on cold stone floors and the penitential consumption of lutefisk. Or maybe there are parties for the common people, but not for the drüskelle. Not for an orphan boy raised in the Ice Court, a child soldier just like -- well, just like her. Back in Os Alta, Nina might have had the benefit of a lavish party in the Little Palace, feast and merriment and festivity, but it would all be under the watchful eyes of Tsar Pyotr (well, Tsar Nikolai now) and General Kirigan (well, before Alina Starkov killed him) weighing them up and deciding where to send them into the field, as soon as the winter snows melted enough to start the spring campaign. Nina can't remember any time when that awareness didn't shape her entire existence, and how little she thought of it, at least until she did. Until she decided that it was profoundly wrong for Grisha to be bound in lifetime service to anyone, and took the job as a freelance intelligence agent. It gave her the illusion of freedom, that way. The illusion of choice. And with Matthias, for such a short time, the illusion of love. But that's the thing about illusions. They're not real. They never were.
"We... didn't do much," Matthias says at last, half to himself. "Prayers, mostly. The winter solstice is a moment of great importance for Djel. Was," he corrects himself, as if he too doesn't know what's next, what he believes in, any of it. "What about you?"
"I don't know." Nina looks down, twists the worn quilt between her fingers, forces herself to speak. "Well, we did have a party, in -- in Os Alta, but I don't think either of us would be up for it now. The old traditions all seem a bit... empty."
Matthias considers that for a long moment, unhurried and remote, implacable as a glacier, tall and solid as stone -- still there, still unbroken, still him, even after everything, and it closes Nina's throat. Then at last, he moves over and sits on the bed next to her, not too close, but just enough for their fingers to brush. The silence aches, all the space and all the hurt between them, the way they fell into each other's arms and then fell out almost as quickly -- Ravkan and Fjerdan, Grisha and drüskelle, ancient enemies by right and yet just two scarred lonely children who just didn't care about that, not really, when they were desperate to take hands and walk together. Nina aches with her whole being to take his hand again now, but she doesn't. After what she did, she has no right to presume.
"Well," Matthias says at last. He gets up, digs around in the wardrobe, and finds a pair of candles, which he sets on the mantel. Gets a taper and lights them -- a small flame, especially compared to that in the hearth, but still a beacon of simple and quiet hope, a moment of truce, the first one they've really had. "We'll have to start somewhere with making new ones, won't we?"
"Yes," Nina says. She means it more than she can possibly express, tangled and torn-up, somewhere in the ruins of her chest and the darkness of her mind -- but there too, in the bleak midwinter, another flame is burning, and perhaps, this time it will stay. "We do."
