Matthias death sucks for too many reasons to count but one of them is the fact we’ll never get to see Zoya’s relationship to him go from “ugh, I’ll begrudgingly tolerate the Fjerdan because Nina likes him” to “This is also one of my children and if anything were to happen to him I’d reign hellfire down upon everyone”
the more i think about what could have been with matthias and his relationship with zoya specifically, it feels like a ripple of pain shoots through me. because not only you’re so fucking right, but he would genuinely have started to see what real care, affection, and love are supposed to look like from the people who raise you.
zoya was one of the monsters brum built for him. even on the ice, when nina says her name, he reacts strongly enough for her to realize matthias grew up with stories where zoya was the thing in the shadows. so meeting her while he was still struggling with his decisions and his whole worldview in ck was huge. and even then he was so determined to help. even when zoya wanted to put him in chains, he barely reacts to that part at all, because he’s still focused on, “am i doing the right thing by being here?”
and at first he kind of tries to defend nina against zoya because, on instinct, he believes zoya could be as bad as brum or worse. he tells nina she’s not their soldier to command anymore, because that is what he has been trying to tell himself too. but then he actually sees how much zoya cares for nina, and she’s nowhere near the kind of parental figure he knew. zoya doesn’t fucking try to kill nina on sight because nina fell in love with the enemy and brought a drüskelle into their hideout. she listens. she judges, she gets angry, but she listens. how jarring it must have been for matthias to watch the side he was taught to fear, care for its own with more humanity than the so called righteous hero who shot the boy he raised as a son in the chest.
and even with so little time together, both zoya and nikolai end up saying, in their own way, “bring your fjerdan to ravka too. it’s your home.” and if they’d had more time, they would have actually gotten to learn each other. zoya would have learned what kind of enemy he was raised to fear, and matthias would have learned what kind of enemy had really raised him. and when they went to war against the drüskelle together, it would have meant everything that matthias, a victim of that same violence, chose to fight for the freedom of fjerdan people like himself and fjerdan grisha.
but anyway, yeah. this post cornered me and stabbed me seventeen times.
