Chapter Text
Nikolai never understood the last words his soulmate sent to him. He didn’t even remember the day. He’d been thirteen, and his soulmate had written to him just the same as they always had. It had been in Kerch but Nikolai had long since stopped caring. The sharp letters were a comfort even if he never understood them.
His soulmate had written to him just like any other day. And then they hadn’t. The words had long since faded from memory by the time Nikolai realised there wouldn’t be another.
His soulmate was alive. He knew they were, otherwise his words wouldn’t still bleed into his skin. And yet they never responded to another message Nikolai sent. Not even when he eventually grew old enough to write in Kerch.
Nikolai could never bring himself to stop writing though. Not his mother’s scorn, nor his soulmate’s rejection could stop him. He wrote nearly every day. Along the inside of his legs or high up on his arms where the words would be easy to hide. No word of acknowledgment was ever returned.
He tells them about his day. He tells them every mundane detail that could never be traced back to himself. Sometimes he tells them about his hopes, his dreams, even his fears. He never tells them about his sadness.
Nikolai sometimes dreamed that his soulmate was of royal blood just like him. That their silence was simply the bidding of their overbearing parents. He dreamed that the Saints would still see them together, married and finally able to speak to one another. He knew it was a false hope. There were few royals close in age to him and with the state of Ravka’s enemies he knew what his parents hoped for his marriage. More to the point, Kerch had no sovereign.
There was to be no love match waiting for him in his future. He knew this. His mother had been preparing him for it. He knew his duty to his country, to his people, extended further than just his service on the battlefield.
None of this made it easier to pull his pen away from his skin. Even if they never answered.
He knows his mother was looking for suitors for him. Someone who will strengthen Ravka’s alliances. Someone who can provide aid in their war effort. It was stifling.
Perhaps that was why he spent so long thinking of the sea. There was a whole world out there for him to see. A world beyond his responsibility to his country. Somewhere out there was his soulmate.
His fingers trace the dark ink of the map. Kerch. He’d go there one day. When the war was over.
Kaz rarely thinks about his soulmate. They had been a dream from a boy long dead. Kaz Rietveld had once longed for his other half. Kaz Brekker knew his path lay only in vengeance.
Still, there were times when he still thought about that other path. As he lay in his bed with his leg screaming in protest he thought once more about that childish comfort he had once felt looking at loopy black words sent by another.
It had been a long time since Kaz had anyone else standing by his side. It was a long time since he had wanted such a thing. But in that moment he found that he would have taken anything if it meant a distraction from the splitting, splintering pain radiating up his leg.
But Kaz knew what hope did to people in the barrel. That’s what soulmates were. Hope for a life that wasn't so empty. And hope was the worst drug to be found in the barrel. Because no soulmate could give Kaz what he really needed. They couldn’t fill that hole that Jordie had left behind. They couldn’t quiet the raging hatred he held inside. And he didn’t want them to.
So Kaz ignored the lure of his soulmate, just as he had with the pain numbing drugs left behind by the medic. Pain could fuel him, but hope was just a distraction.
Childhood dreams were funny things. Most were forgotten with age. Somehow Nikolai had never quite been able to let go of his dream. Even if they never replied, Nikolai had still believed there was hope as long as his soulmate still lived.
Perhaps that was why it felt so bittersweet to have to argue with his mother over his decision to marry Alina.
It was the right thing to do for his people and his country. Maybe one day he might even believe that it had been the right thing for himself.
He wonders if there’s any comfort to be found in the fact that Alina doesn’t want this any more than he does. His pen hovers over his arm, fingers trembling. He lets it slip free from his grip. He watches as the nib splatters the carpet with ink. He and Alina may be just as reluctant as each other to enter into this arrangement, but there’s one thing Alina has that he never will. The ability to lean on her soulmate at the end of the day, to tell him everything.
Nikolai stares at the ink splattered below his feet. He might as well have written to the carpet. At least it would actually be around.