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Viggo Tarasov: They call him Baba Yaga.
Iosef Tarasov: "The Boogeyman"?
Viggo Tarasov: Well [he] wasn't exactly the Boogeyman. He was the one you sent to kill the fucking Boogeyman.
Iosef Tarasov: Oh.
John Wick
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The last person to call her Alina for many, many years to come, was Mama.
They’d already slaughtered Papa and Mal.
Mama, who’d screamed it as the Druskelle had slid the blade between her ribs, stolen her very breath, “Alina run!”
Her Mama, who had never so much as killed a fly, had died, telling her to run.
The Druskelle had turned to her, dropped the still warm corpse of her mother to the ground like she was trash.
And Alina had felt the Light rise in her, scorching and brutal and deadly.
She hadn’t run.
He’d been ash before he’d even had the chance to scream.
His men had run, though. Grown men, scared like boys, run from the girl who had walked, slowly, deliberately after them, feet unhurried on scorched earth.
“Baba Yaga,” they last of them had whispered, when she had caught up with them, insensate with fear, and oh, Alina had liked the sound of that.
“You, will live,” she had whispered, snow white hair hanging over one unearthly golden eye, as a finger branded into his forehead a long mark, “to remind them of what will happen when they hunt the innocent.”
He runs. He lives. He tells his friends.
They kill him for his cowardice. A squad of Druskelle, killed by one little witch?
Unthinkable.
They do not learn.
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But oh, that does not mean Baba Yaga stops teaching.
Peace, Alina decides, was never an option.
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She buries her dead, mourns.
Rages.
Alina was never tested, as the Grisha that live in the Little Palace were. The border towns, full of poor immigrants, had never ranked highly on the list of places where palace Grisha were sent.
They’d lived there for that anonymity, her parents, a Shu Grisha and a Ravkan Otkazat’sya.
Been killed for it, in the end.
She herself had lived a simple life, loved a simple boy – a tracker, who had kept them in game when others had starved – and never once felt the rush of the Light as she does now, the power.
She stares at herself in the still water of a small pond, looks upon shocking white hair, angry golden eyes, and does not recognize that simple girl.
She’d died, Alina knows now, with her family.
Perhaps in a kind world, a just world, this power would have come to her before the death, the destruction, of all she had known and loved.
But this is the world she lives in.
She buries her grief in anger and buries that simple girl she once was.
Becomes someone new.
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Mama had been an Inferni – untrained, as all Shu Grisha were – but she had taught her daughter what she knew of meditation, and Alina had always been an attentive pupil.
Papa had been a blacksmith, and a mason, when the skill was needed, and this too Alina had learned.
She builds a little cottage, deep in the woods. Away from the preying eyes of Druskelle, and practices.
The balls of Light come first, easiest. They illuminate or burn, depending on her mood, her wants.
And oh, Alina wants vengeance.
The shield is next, that protects, defends.
Blinds.
The Cut after, as deadly as any blade her Papa had made.
She hones it until it is as sharp, as accurate as his were.
And for Mal, that simple love long gone? This new woman fills her days with tracking, finding Druskelle raiding parties and showing them the Light, making them pay.
They would not likely be honored by how she chooses to remember them.
But they are dead, and she is not.
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In her days, she hunts with Light.
In her nights, she dreams of Darkness.
There is something that calls to her, something ancient calling to the newly born, power calling to power.
We are of the same, the darkness murmurs, silky soft.
In this world, Darkness is a place, a nightmare.
But it is only ever a pleasant dream, to her.
For after all, what does Light have to fear from Darkness?
Come find us, the shadows whisper, caress.
One day, Alina thinks, watching her prey begin their terrible hunt.
One day.
But not until the work is done.
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Baba Yaga, the Druskelle come to whisper amongst themselves, you’ll run, but she’ll find you, burn you.
And well, what else can she do?
When your enemy goes to ground, after all, you burn the ground.
And oh, the ground burns.
Eventually, they stop running. They stay, fight.
Die.
And yet, they still do not stop hunting.
Ten years on, and the women inside the skin of Baba Yaga is becoming tired of their ability to never learn.
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The Druskelle think she is an Inferni, and then, as the years pass, a legend, a witchy specter, haunting them. Either way, they don’t much care at the distinction.
A witch is a witch is a witch, to witch-hunters.
Alina certainly isn’t going to correct them.
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When one hundred years pass, and they still have not learned, Alina decides she will have to find another approach.
She still looks nineteen. Forever frozen between the girl and the myth, the monster that kills monsters.
Still, for all that she looks young, she is weary.
She has power, in her Light. Power to punish, to demand vengeance for those who took from her what she had not been able to bear losing.
But she is only one woman, and even she cannot stop an entire culture of hatred from her little cabin in the woods.
She contemplates, for a heady summer, killing the King.
Of scorching the ground all the way to Djerholm, breaching the Ice Court, and showing them what only a fraction of her pain, her agony, feels like.
She’s still contemplating hazy details when she … convinces a Druskelle to tell her something particularly interesting.
There is a raiding party heading to the capital of West Ravka, of all places.
Druskelle don’t cross over the boarder that far. They ransack only the outskirts, killing only the Grisha who are untrained, weak.
Innocent.
Matthias Helvar and his little band have been on Baba Yaga’s list for a while. But now, they’re something she hasn’t felt in a very long while.
Intriguing.
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Alina thinks very little of Ravka. Of its East and West, it’s Grisha and Otkazat’sya.
She thinks only slightly more of its gaping middle, The Fold.
For all the death and destruction The Fold has wrought, Alina finds it a handy thing. Her prey sometimes tries to evade her by sneaking around it, losing valuable time as they run from Baba Yaga.
Alina cuts right through it, carves a tunnel of Light that bears her safe passage, waits, for them to come to her.
And then Cuts right through them, when they finally reach her.
It will be easy enough then for her to make ground on the Druskelle, reach Novo-Kribrisk before they do.
Before she goes, she takes some precautions. Her eyes are simple enough; a trick of the Light and they no longer glow, but the hair? It takes more time.
Her white hair is useful for fear, in the woods, but it draws attention all the same. So, she brews herbs, darkens the mixture with berries, lets it set on the strands until the paste has blackened it once more, rinses in the cold pond.
The girl who looks back at her is such a stranger, such a half-remembered dream, Alina almost aches for her.
That simple girl and her simple life.
Almost.
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Novo-Kribrisk is the biggest city Alina has ever been in, and she finds it fascinating.
Monsters that hunt monsters in the woods have little use for politics, but even the Druskelle whisper of the unrest that has weakened Ravka, made it easier still to hunt Grisha.
It is strange, still, to see it.
There is a part of her that wants to stay here, to see all that she can see, of this vast world beyond what she has made for herself.
But the work is not done, and so Alina continues onwards.
A group of Fjerdan men are easy enough to find in a Ravkan city. Unlike her, they have not taken the precautions to blend, and their furs and wild beards stick out like sore thumbs.
Helvar blends better, Alina notes, this young man and his bolo, who waits outside as the others plan their ambush.
Four Druskelle is plenty for a Heartrender, even one as talented as this one seems.
It is not enough for Baba Yaga.
The three men in the room are dispatched with ease, two blinded, screaming, and the other burnt, writhing.
But the one outside does something that remains intriguing.
He learns.
He does not stay; fight a battle he cannot win.
He runs.
They’ll kill him for that, Alina knows, wonders if he knows it too. Wonders if he will run back to his frozen wasteland with the monster they whisper of trailing him, or find himself a little hole to hide in this sprawling city.
It won’t save him from Baba Yaga.
From her.
She turns for the door, to give chase.
“Please wait,” the girl says, their intended prey, puts her hand on Alina’s arm, not to trap but just to hold, a strange weight, “You’re the Sun Summoner.”
Alina almost laughs at her, this girl who was almost kidnapped and taken to the Ice Court for a verdict that is never innocent. This girl who fought with skill, with power, and yet still believes in children’s tales of good and evil.
But there’s something there, in the way the girl looks at her. Something that stops her, makes her take another look.
Something Alina has been searching for, in the woods; looking for and not finding.
Until now.
Power.
Not the power to burn, to illuminate, as her Light grants her.
This is the kind of power to shape worlds.
Somewhere in this city is a Druskelle Alina wants to kill, more so almost than she wants to breathe. But this, here is something she needs.
She lets him go, lets him live, embraces a new path.
“I’ve never done that before,” Alina demurs, draws into herself, makes herself smaller, vulnerable, “I don’t know how I did it. You looked like you needed help.”
“I did, thank you! Let me help you, let me take you somewhere safe,” The girl entreats, and Alina knows if the Heartrender were to check her pulse now it would betray nothing but a steady beat, “I’m Nina.”
She almost lies, but there’s no one alive that would know the name.
“Alina,” she says, and it almost doesn’t taste strange on her tongue.
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The story she tells Nina, this Heartrender girl, is part lie, part truth, as all good lies are.
She is an orphan; truth. She has been living on the streets of West Ravka since her parents’ death: lie. She was never tested; truth.
She has never summoned light before; lie.
Alina has not been her father’s daughter in so many years, who sat at his knee as he told her stories of Old Ravka, of lore.
But still, she remembers.
The Sun Summoner was a savior, a hero, a Saint. Destined to bring down The Fold, the Black Heretic’s great mistake, and unite all Ravka once more.
Baba Yaga is the monster to monsters.
Alina, personally, doesn’t give a fuck if The Fold falls or remains.
But there are people, she knows, many, many people that do, and those people are going to give her the power she needs to change this miserable world, to punish those that think they can hurt the weak.
If she needs to be a lamb to get that, then so be it.
She can work with that.
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The man who Nina meets, to smuggle them across The Fold is a very good liar.
Alina respects that.
His story is a mixture of truth and lies as well, some easy to parse out, some more of a challenge.
He watches her with careful eyes, clever eyes, and when Nina calls him The Conductor, Alina must hide a smile made of entirely too many teeth.
There are things only she knows, too.
The crossing of The Fold is likely his easiest, though she hides her interference well. No one sees the Light that bats back volcra, eases them gently thorough the Darkness.
He still watches her, closely.
They part ways at the other side, and Alina keeps her head down, lets Nina pull her along, lets their erstwhile Conductor melt into the crowd.
Alina knows they’ll see him again.
If the meeting he had with West Ravka’s General before they leave is any indication, he’s probably going to try and stick a knife in her back, one of these days.
She intends for that to be a truly unpleasant surprise for him.
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They manage to catch Ravka’s Black General, The Darkling, it seems, just in time, before the man leaves for some outpost at the edge of The Fold.
Fated, something sizzles, deep in her Light.
Nina does not take her through the main gate, Alina notes, watchful. She sneaks them instead through tunnels, brings her before only one man who watches, a silent shadow.
But he does not need to speak for Alina to hear that call of Darkness, so familiar.
Oh hello, old friend, it whispers, enraptured, hungry, not the voice of men, but the language the power they share, I’ve so missed you.
You finally found us.
“What are you?” The man made of Shadows asks her, the woman made of Light and oh, Alina wants to laugh.
“Nothing,” the little lamb she is pretending to be demurs, looks up at him. Baits the hook of the Black Heretic that stands before her, ancient and powerful.
He takes her arm, and her flesh tingles, at his touch. And then he takes his ring, this thing with claws, draws it across her skin, as intimate as any kiss.
And she shines.
He looks at her, entranced, as if she is the answer to every question he has ever asked.
Bites.
And oh, the monster that hunts monsters in her smiles.
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The arrangements are made, quickly and easily. The Black General – Kirigan, he calls himself, a descendant of the Black Heretic and Alina wants to chuckle at that – commands power and respect amongst his Grisha, and this Alina can admire.
The Tsar and Tsarina she is … less impressed with.
The oaf and his vain queen are of little importance though, in her mission. Kings and queens come and go, kingdoms rise and fall.
Here, in the Little Palace, at least, Grisha seem to endure.
She finds her role easy to play, in turns. The little lamb, untrained with Baghra, who scowls at her, underestimates her. The friendless girl with Marie and Nadia, who take her under their wings, offer simple companionship. The roughened stone to Genya’s polished gem, perfection that hides a deep sadness.
When Botkin asks her if she has ever trained for a fight, it is all she can do to keep from laughing until she cries.
The Squaller girl, Zoya, stands to meet her on the field, and Alina almost sighs. Secrets are an easy enough thing to find in the Little Palace, for one such as she, and that Zoya once warmed The Darkling’s bed circulates easily, freely.
So too does the news that she no longer has an invite, since Alina arrived.
She probably should let the girl win – the mouse she is pretending to be certainly would – but then she dances too close, hisses, spitefully, in a moment where Alina has given her the upper hand, “The General likes it when I put him on his back too.”
Alina lays her out in a second, no Light required.
“You should stay down,” Alina tells her, stands over the gasping form of the girl, and in her eyes, she knows there is a terrible kindness.
Zoya swallows, once.
Stays down.
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The kefta that Genya brings her is a stunning thing of black and gold, a statement if Alina has ever seen one.
We are of the same, it says, like the shadows whisper.
She wears blue, just to see what will happen.
“I hear you did, very well, in hand to hand yesterday,” The General says causally, at the steps of the Palace, tone not enough to hide his frown at her kefta.
There is a terribly petty victory in that, and Alina delights in it shamelessly.
“The world is an unkind place. No girl survives without being able to handle herself,” Alina says, only, a truth she knows in her very bones.
He looks at her, and Alina wonders what he sees.
She meets his eyes and does not look away.
“Call me Aleksander,” he asks abruptly, upon his great black steed, breaks their shared gaze, kicks gently the beast into movement.
That too, felt like a truth.
Alina watches his back for long moments, considering.
Follows.
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There is something comforting in the lies he tells her, at the fountain. Truth, between them, feels sharp, sacred, this strange and precious thing.
The lies are easier, if not more disappointing.
“If I fail, they’ll make me their new Heretic,” she demurs, her part of this game they are playing, and his stare is fierce as he tells her, “I won’t let that happen.”
She would very much like to watch him do so, she realizes. Would like to watch him stand between her and those who would wish harm on her and not let that happen.
He’s terribly handsome, this monster she’s found.
“You and I are going to change the world,” he offers then, no longer fierce, but with an intensity that borders on sweet, and Alina stares at him, tries to spot the lie.
But she cannot.
Monsters are not supposed to offer you power that you do not have to take. Not supposed to look at you like they’d die if they stopped.
And yet, here he is, Ravka’s most feared Grisha, offering her just that.
Alina looks at him, and something she’d thought long dead in her stirs.
There is something beginning here, in the making of the heart of the world.
Something great and terrible.
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She wonders if the world will survive it.
He keeps looking at her.
She can’t much say she cares if it does not.
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She starts wearing the black kefta the next day.
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He calls to her one night, not in voice but in power and Alina finds she can do nothing more than follow.
When she finds him at his war table, this sentinel, alone against the world, what can she do but take his hand?
He’s so very lonely, Alina thinks, brilliant, blessed with so much power, burdened by eternity.
So very tired and angry.
Saints, Alina thinks, dizzy almost with the joy of knowing it, it’s like looking in a mirror.
She wants to sup from his rage, his darkness. Wants to cradle herself in it, a velvet glove around an iron fist.
Their wants are not all the same.
He wants to save the Grisha and is unbothered by the violent means he has taken to do so.
She wants to punish those who hurt the innocent, the weak, and finds violence the best way to do so.
Their wants are not all the same.
But they do align so nicely.
“I’ve waited so long for you,” he says, cradled safe in her bubble of Light. Takes her face in his big hand and oh, Alina knows, only some of their wants are not the same.
He looks at her and she wants and wants and wants.
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“Beware of powerful men,” Genya warns her, eyes cast to the side, and there is something in Alina that softens, looking at the girl. Genya, she knows, reports back to The Darkling on her, loyalty she might admire if it was not directed against her.
Still, this half warning is … kind.
Genya, she also knows, bears the … affections of a man she cannot say no to. The Tsar of Ravka, who sits upon a throne he did not earn, abuses the subjects he has under his domain.
The Tsar, who as of late, has begun to sicken.
Alina lived in the woods for a hundred years, alone. She learned which roots were safe to eat, which berries were not.
Genya’s little box of tricks contains at least four different ways to kill a man, slowly, painfully.
And what is a Tsar, after all, but a man?
“Perhaps, they should be afraid of powerful women,” Alina says, and the smile she sends the other woman is full of teeth.
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When she kisses him before the Fete, it is sweet, this impulse she cannot bear to stifle, foreign to one such as her.
It has been so long since she meant something to anyone.
There is still a part of her that wonders if this is an act, a trap, a sweet lie, for the lamb he thinks her to be.
But when he kisses her, at the Fete, she knows, terrifyingly, that this is truth.
He doesn’t kiss her like a General waging war, like a Heretic tempting a Saint, or even like villain wearing the artifice of a good man.
He kisses her like a man who loves her.
And Saints, nothing could scare her more.
What lies between them is not supposed to be caring, not supposed to be tender.
They are monsters, are they not? Baba Yaga and the Black Heretic, fearsome things that make bad men quiver. Stories parents tell their children, to scare them into behaving.
But oh, she kisses him back.
Because he laughs with her, jokes with her, looks at her, asks her if she is sure, and Alina can tell he means it. Would stop, instantly, if she said.
There is a power here that terrifies her in how much she wants it.
Looking at him, Alina knows he feels entirely the same.
Alina has never been the one who runs from her fears.
Ivan’s knock at the door is almost a relief.
Almost.
She kisses him – softly, tenderly, not an act but a need – tells him to go, tells him she will wait.
She wonders, in their game of cat and mouse, who has ensnared who.
His rushed last kiss, like he cannot bear to be parted from her, like he needs her like air in his lungs, blood in his veins, gives Alina the answer.
They have ensnared each other.
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It is safe to say that, still reeling from that revelation, Baghra’s appearance, decidedly, is not a relief.
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“Child,” Baghra tells her, rushing her along the tunnels, pushing the little mouse she thinks Alina to be forward, pious in her self-righteousness, “Aleksander is The Black Heretic.”
And Alina can only stop, look at her, laugh.
“Oh,” she tells the old woman, who has come to save her, “I know.”
Alina needs no saving.
Baghra stares at her, uncomprehending, and Saints, Alina does not have time for this.
That she uses her shield rather than the Cut is all the kindness she has to offer.
“The blindness will wear off,” she tells Baghra, Aleksander’s mother, this woman who wanted a little toy in her battle against her son and got her instead, “But now you’ll have excuse me. I have a man to kill.”
Because, well … the Heartrender was not as quiet as he thinks he is.
Marie, it seems, has taken the knife meant for her, and oh, Alina burns with the rage of it.
Alina has a promise to keep with the dear Conductor.
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Aleksander is easy to find, even in these sprawling tunnels.
He calls to her, like to like.
She waits, unseen, hidden in her illusion, learned sometime in her fifth decade hunting Druskelle.
Invisibility had been such a lovely tool in making them pay.
Waits, until Aleksander sends the Heartrender and the Squaller away. Waits, until he shrouds the room in his shadows, until it is only them, and their prisoner.
And then she pulls down the illusion, burns the dye from her hair, stops waiting.
“Hello again,” she says, pleasantly, to the man tied to the chair, ignores the jolt of Aleksander, who she knows thought she was waiting upstairs, a good little girl, for him to return.
Alina hasn’t been that girl in a very long time.
“You … your hair was black,” the man says, disoriented, afraid, and Alina laughs, for if she cannot be who she truly is here, cradled in the bowels of the Little Palace, hidden by Aleksander’s shadows, then where can she be?
“Was it?” She asks, facetiously, flickers the illusion once more across her face, removes it again.
Takes in the stare of Aleksander as she does, their silent shadow, watching, learning, “A trick of the Light, perhaps?”
“Baba Yaga,” The Conductor whispers, stares at her with huge eyes, and Alina thinks, now they’re finally getting somewhere.
Aleksander’s stare is like a living thing, and Alina thinks, later, oh later.
“Did the Druskelle you sold Grisha to tell you that?” She purrs, slowly, feels Aleksander start behind them, at this secret he did not know.
Not many people surprise me, he’d told her, and oh, it’s still a thrill to do so.
“I didn’t – I,” the man tries to deny, insensate in his fear, and she’s so disappointed at how poorly he lies now, under pressure.
“You did,” she says, cutting his babble off calmly, “They told me your name. They all told me. The Conductor.”
She moves closer, lets the ball of Light spin around him, lazily, as she leans in, says, with terrible kindness, “No one ever lies, in the Light.”
“I’ll give you whatever you want,” he pleads, this broken, disgusting thing, “Money, information, anything!”
She laughs, and oh it is a terrible thing.
This time, when Alina speaks, there is nothing of kindness, “I want my parents back, I want my friends back.”
“But this will have to do,” Alina says, and Cuts him down.
He drops to the floor, pieces of a man, and Alina discards him just as easily. Turns finally to meet the gaze of Aleksander, her shadow self.
And smiles.
“I’m not really the waiting kind of woman,” Alina says, lets him finally see the woman she’s made of herself, who she really is.
“I see that,” Aleksander replies, slowly, and oh, the devotion on his face as he looks at her is monstrously lovely.
He never looks away.
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They fuck like animals, that first time. Like ancient beasts, finding their way home to each other, finally.
Aleksander fists his hands in her snow-white hair, yanks her head back to ravage her neck with deep bruising kisses. Alina rakes nails down his back and demands more, more, more as he pounds into her, this most primal of mating’s.
The second time, there is softness.
Alina brackets his face gently, sups soft kisses from his mouth and Aleksander moves slowly within her, looks nowhere but her eyes as he runs gentle hands down her flesh, soothes, teases.
She’ll raze kingdoms for this.
In his eyes, she sees he will do the same.
“Will you miss her?” She asks him, after. Traces idle shapes on his still damp flesh, curious of the answer, “The little lamb you thought me to be?”
“I rather like the wolf I’ve found in her clothes,” Aleksander says, pulls her ever closer to him, as if he cannot bear even the scantest distance from her.
“Good,” she purrs, and oh, it is.
The world, Alina knows, is not black and white. She is not the little girl she once was, nor perhaps even the monster she left in the woods not so long along.
Perhaps, Alina thinks, in she loving him – in he loving her – they have become something entirely new.
Not just the Black Heretic, not just Baba Yaga; not just weapons of pain and vengeance, but something more.
Something with teeth, capable of tenderness.
What a terrifyingly beautiful thought that is.
This thing between them will never be simple, as Alina had had once, so long ago.
But oh, she wouldn’t want it any other way.
“Tell me,” she demands, rises above him to take him into her body, delights in the stretch of him, the look he bestows upon her, rapturous, “How you and I are going to change the world.
He does.
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When the Tsar, the Tsarina, their son all take ill, perish of their illness, the Shadow and Sun Summoner’s mourn, as all good subjects of Ravka should.
Alina and Aleksander only smile.
They take to The Fold, and Alina grasps Aleksander’s hand, carves a tunnel of Light through the center of it. Do not tear it down – for what a waste of power that would be – but instead create a path, from one side to the other, uniting Ravka once more.
A path that will endure, so long as its creators do.
One must never forget the stick with the carrot, after all.
And when the people demand they are crowned, the new and forever more rulers of Ravka, the Santka Alina and the Starless Sankt, well, what can they do but accept?
You and I are going to change the world, he promised her.
You are not alone, she promised him.
In the end, they’re both promises they keep.
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One monster, alone against the world, with nothing to lose?
A fearsome thing, to be sure. But manageable, beatable.
Two monsters, together against the world, with everything to lose?
Pity the fool that goes against the latter.
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They will not be kind rulers, nor perhaps even good.
There will be bloodshed, and wars. Good people will still die, and sometimes bad people will still prosper.
And yet, so too will the people say that the Tsar and Tsarina never aimed their rage at those who did not deserve it. That under their rule, Ravka prospered, and its enemies quivered. That Grisha lived well, and safe, and little girls did not wake in the middle of the night to watch their parents be slaughtered.
The bards will not sing of how their rulers brought this to be, for that is not how history remembers.
But they will sing of them.
No, they will not be good.
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They will be great.
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FIN
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