[ffxv] kings and guardians, pt 2
Dec. 5th, 2018 03:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gigantomachy“What was that supposed to mean, anyway?” Nyx asks, over dinner.
Cor looks up from the bowl in front of him, a piece of sauce-drenched fish dangling precariously from his fork. Across the table, Nyx is watching him with an expression somewhere between worry and expectation. Back in the hall, they’d both been lost for a time in the grip of the binding, a moment shattered only when Nyx withdrew to reclaim his seat on the throne, followed by a hasty dismissal of the court for the evening.
A man named Libertus had argued for a full ten minutes about the obvious danger of leaving Nyx alone with a stranger, so soon after the assassinations. Clearly, he’d been shaken by what he’d seen between them; his eyes kept darting to Cor and back to Nyx, frustration and distrust writ plain on his face as he tried to get his message through to his king.
Cor was certain he wasn’t the only one who felt that way, but there was little he could do about that.
No one had prepared him for this; rather, he had been led to believe that his kind were known. Expected. Celebrated like a blessing, according to the masters. Without enough information to guide him, Cor had remained silent when Libertus jammed a broad finger into his breastbone and swore an inventively painful death should any harm come to Nyx; a sentiment that only increased when Nyx himself promised he was in no safer hands in all the kingdom.
(Somewhat hurt, too, Cor sensed, and took it for a good thing. Libertus might be a rough and ignorant, but there was loyalty and affection for his king there, and Cor could not begrudge him that.)
“What do you mean?” Cor asks in return, and sets his fork aside to focus on the conversation.
“I mean, this what I need you to be business. It’s a little – well. Dramatic.” That troubled look doesn’t leave Nyx’s face, even when he glances away in obvious discomfort.
It still stings, to recognize how misguided his first impression had been. Decades of training and exhaustive observation have left Cor with plenty of skill in reading people, but it hadn’t been until he’d laid hands on Nyx that he’d understood the depth of the young king’s facade – that, and the damage that lay in its shadow.
After Nyx had pulled away, he’d been careful not to come too close to Cor again, always remaining out of arm’s reach despite what Cor had felt from him when they’d connected. A profoundly frustrating thing – for Nyx’s sake, yes, but also because he seems once more intent on overturning every one of Cor’s expectations. “It doesn’t get simpler than that. It’s not advanced magic, your majesty.”
Nyx makes a face. Vaguely nauseated; vaguely annoyed, all visible beneath the mask of tiredness now that Cor has been close enough to see. When did he last slept properly? “Okay. Okay – don’t, with the majesty thing. If we’re … this, then use my name. And also? It might as well be, because I’m kinda running through the fucking woods in the dark, here.” Nyx stares at Cor in a moment of defiance, before something in him gives and he looks away.
Cor resists the urge to massage the bridge of his nose, to chase away the tension building there. “What of the last guardian? The Atlas?”
Surprisingly, Nyx only shakes his head mutely. Surely, Cor thinks. Surely the last king had –
“I was just a kid when Evvy disappeared, Cor. Like – three. Maybe four, but just barely. She didn’t come back one day, and no one was allowed to talk about it, so no one did. So.” He drops his hands, holding them out to either side of his body in a gesture of helplessness. “I know what you are. I know what it means for you to be here. Just–”
“Then, in this moment, I am your guide.” Cor says it as gently as he can, some of that frustration ebbing away in a moment of understanding. This would be so much easier if Nyx weren’t so far away, but Cor has begun to string together the string of misfortunes that have led them both to this moment. A dead king, crippled long before that with the absence of his guardian; the dismay Cor feels at the idea almost matches his surprise that he’d lasted so long at all.
“Great,” Nyx mutters. “You and every elder in Galahd.”
“Your elders can only give you so much, my king, no matter their dedication. They possess their own wisdom and experience, but they were not shaped to suit you.”
“That's…” A long stretch of silence. It takes a little while, for Nyx to look at him again, but he’s relaxing a little, settling into his chair a little less like a man ready to flee. “That’s, uh – something. How, exactly, does that work?”
Cor shrugs. “I arrived at the Enclave, when I was a child. And I – chose. What to study. What to master.”
Nyx looks skeptical. “How could you know?”
“I chose what you would need.”
A laugh, then – that disbelief edged with wry humor. “That’s kind of circular, don’t you think?”
“Not at all,” Cor says. “I was there because I knew. If I didn’t – I wouldn’t be yours, would I?”
“Mine.” Nyx flinches around the eyes when Cor nods solemnly, like he’s been struck by an electrical current – like the concept pains him, somehow. For quite some time afterwards, Nyx doesn’t say anything, just turns his attention to the stretch of weathered wood between them and works his way through a succession of increasingly tired expressions. “All right. I think –”
Cor senses bitter self-recrimination in the bark of laughter that follows, the hands that drag through that uneven mane of dark hair. “Who am I kidding? I don’t know what to think. Just. Eat up, before dinner gets cold.”
Cor bows his head, relieved that Nyx seems to have taken at least some of what he’s said to heart. “Go to the temple, my king. The Atlas should be within; you’d do well to read it. You’ll understand.”
“It’s Nyx,” he says, and points meaningfully at Cor’s bowl, before taking up his own to signal an end to the discussion.
Later, Cor waits in a silence that seems to be increasing in mass between them, while Nyx struggles with something he obviously wants to say. In the meantime, he turns his attention to his surroundings: a modest but well-kept apartment with sparsely spaced but comfortable-looking, well made pieces of furniture, long stretches of empty wall contrasting with the occasional tapestry or corkboard littered with scribbled notes and trinkets that Cor does not recognize.
Cor waits, and waits a while longer, and wonders how much of his own decisive nature is meant to support his king.
Finally, Nyx clears his throat. “Listen,” he says, and hesitates again when Cor looks to him expectantly. “Listen, I wasn’t – expecting company. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to offer you the barracks, but–”
“You worry about further assassination attempts,” Cor says. “As do I.”
Nyx opens his mouth to say something, but then thinks the better of it, deflating a little as he passes a hand over his face. “Yeah.”
Cor smiles faintly, relieved by the ease of the admission, the thought of more familiar territory. “Then I will stay close, to guard you.”
“The couch is pretty comfortable. There are some spare blankets in the closet–”
“I would think you’d be more secure in your bed, Nyx.”
“I meant.” Nyx barks a soft, disbelieving laugh. “I meant for you.”
Oh. Cor eyes the couch, measuring the distance between it and the bedroom door at the end of the carpeted hallway. Once they’re certain the palace is secure, perhaps. In the meantime? “No. You need rest, and protection, and healing.”
Nyx darts a startled glance at Cor before angling away again. But he holds his silence, even when Cor pushes himself up from the table and moves toward Nyx, until he’s close enough to reach out and touch.
Cor doesn’t. Instead, he waits while Nyx acclimates to the shift in distance, and the heightened sense of awareness that accompanies it. They’re too new to one another for Cor to pick out specific injuries, but he can feel his king’s hurt like an aura, a taste like rust on the back of his tongue. “Let me help,” he says, and Nyx finally lifts his head, turning red-rimmed eyes upwards. Like a caged animal, Cor thinks, caught between hope and fear. Struggling, too, with something he can’t fully comprehend.
Cor holds out his hands, palms up. An invitation.
“You’re a healer?”
“I am what you need me to be,” Cor says, but he’s smiling.
Heartbeats later, when Nyx finally reaches out to take them, he almost is, too.
Nyx’s hair is lank beneath Cor’s palm, his forehead hot to the touch, almost feverish. Cor stretches one leg along the edge of the bed, the heel of his boot catching at the bedding as he eases that little bit further onto the mattress next to where Nyx lies on his back, a thin blanket pulled up to his waist. In the dim light, he can see the vicious bloom of bruises and burns dark against his skin, the red-lipped slash near his navel, where he’d come dangerously close to being gutted on a traitor’s blade.
Close contact has already soothed some of the tightness in Nyx’s face, softening the line of tension in his shoulders. Cor can feel his discomfort at the sensation of a stranger’s hands on him – but it’s the vulnerability that troubles him, rather than the touch itself.
(That, Cor thinks, he seems to like quite well.)
“You argue with everyone?” Nyx asks, his eyes glittering in the shadow Cor casts as he turns to reach out with his other hand, smoothing along the hot line of Nyx’s throat and down the slope of his shoulder, soothing away the bruises and scrapes there with a flood of regenerative magic.
“I was known as … combative, in my youth.” Cor’s mouth twitches at the corner. “I had a long time to learn control. But for you, my king, I will argue. When you need to hear it.”
Beneath his palm, Nyx’s skin is smooth and unmarked. Satisfied, Cor shifts his attention to Nyx’s chest, bruised and blistered by force and fire, a jagged gouge just below his left nipple. It still feels like there’s fire trapped beneath his skin when Cor gently lays his hand over the worst of it and Nyx hisses then, fingers scrabbling to clench around Cor’s wrist, holding tight.
“There’s no need to be embarrassed,” Cor murmurs. “No one is immune to injury.”
Nyx huffs. “This isn’t weird to you, is it? Sitting in bed with some guy you don’t know, in some place you don’t know. You’re not even bothered.”
Cor watches as Nyx tilts his head, face turned toward the shadows in the corner of the bedroom, glaring at the wall. So much anger and hurt. So much self-doubt. Again, Cor finds his thoughts turning toward the last king of Galahd, wondering how he was able to shoulder the weight of his rule alone – what it must have done to the people around him, to leave Nyx like this.
“You still don’t understand,” Cor says at last. He’s not good at soothing, never really made a point of learning to be, but he tries now, for Nyx’s sake. “For all these years, you’ve guided me – not the gods, not even the masters. I know you like I know myself, Nyx Ulric. Through you, I know myself.” Cor is careful not to interrupt the flow of healing magic as he turns his attention upward. The edge of his thumb travels along Nyx’s hairline, smoothing back stray hairs, and he spares a moment of thought on the wish for … something. A copy of the Atlas. A master. A messenger, even, to ease this task. To make Nyx understand.
“I felt that,” Nyx murmurs. “You’re frustrated.”
Cor hums a noncommittal note. “You’re not to blame.”
“That doesn’t bother you, either. That I’m – in your head.”
“On the contrary, it’s a relief.” Cor says, and taps the skin beneath his fingers with the tip his forefinger – whole and unmarked now, pleasantly warm rather than hot with injury. “But you already know that. Does it make you feel better, to hear it out loud?”
Nyx shifts beneath his hand, angling his body toward Cor – only grimacing a little as the motion tugs on the blade wound. “You already know that,” he parrots back, and though Cor hears the mocking edge in his voice, it’s the sense of defensive vulnerability and outright distress radiating from Nyx that holds his attention the most. “Pardon me if I’m not exactly excited to have you reading my mind, Cor.”
At that, Cor hesitates. Draws back, until he feels a flicker of guilt and shame that isn’t his own and Nyx closes his eyes again. Cor breathes a deep sigh as he pushes Nyx onto his back once more with a firm hand against his shoulder, then reaches down to press his palm against the wound.
“What am I thinking?” Cor asks. “Can you tell me?”
Nyx’s brow knits as he considers the question. “You’re frustrated,” he says again.
“We’ve established that much, yes. But what am I thinking, my king?”
“You’re worried. Lost, a little.” The creases on his forehead deepen as he concentrates, and eventually – instinctively – he lifts his other hand to rest over Cor’s, the one pressed against his head. That’s good, Cor thinks; he’s getting the hang of it. Nyx breathes a huff of confused humor, opening an eye to squint up at Cor in something like disbelief. “You know, you just stepped into a rain of piss, Cor – and it’s on fire, just because. But you’re relieved, like – I don’t understand it. It’s so much.”
“I am your umbrella,” Cor says, wry.
Nyx groans. “And I sense that your sense of humor sucks.”
“I didn’t study it,” Cor deadpans. “Now.” He draws his hand away from Nyx’s forehead, turning it to catch Nyx’s fingers in his own, maintaining contact because it’s easier than trying to explain every little facet of this thing between them – and because Nyx is benefiting from the equilibrium, whether he chooses to consciously acknowledge it or not.
Though Cor supposes that holds true for himself, as well.
“Feeling is not thought. I can speculate on the reasons why you feel as you do, but I can’t pull them from your head, just as you cannot take mine from me. Believe me – if it worked that way, this would be much less complicated.”
“Says you,” Nyx grumbles. “I think a lot of wildly inappropriate things, Cor. Don’t think you’d want to sit in on that.”
It’s a glimmer of humor – not much, but a sign of improvement. “Well. Perhaps you are in need of a judge, my king.”
Another groan, deep and heartfelt, and Cor allows himself a brief smile in response. Nyx Ulric isn’t what he expected; he hadn’t lied to Nyx about knowing, but it’s one thing to see a map, and another entirely to walk through the forest it represents. Beneath the hurt and the attempts at evasion, Cor knows the shape of Nyx’s spirit and the strength it contains, the warmth he’s only been able to catch in the periphery of their interactions.
“I swear to all the gods, Cor,” Nyx says, “if you start purring, I’m going to order you to the couch.” He feels Nyx’s amusement tapping at the edge of his consciousness, surprised by the depth of his own pleasure to witness it. Even if the sky above Galahd is falling in, Cor is where he should be, and the rightness of that truth leaves him feeling oddly buoyant.
Cor thinks maybe a little bit of that is Nyx, too.
Beneath his hand, he feels the last of Nyx’s torn skin knit back together – that and the strong wash of naked relief that follows, pain subsiding after days in its brutal grasp. “If you could read my mind,” Cor says, low and soft, “you’d understand. Twenty-two years, preparing for this day. Waiting to find you.”
How could he feel anything else?
But what Nyx feels is dismay and sadness, bitter anxiety like a sharp jolt of electricity. Nyx’s throat clicks when he swallows – and then he pulls his hand back, tucking it up under his chin like a child guarding a wounded limb as he turns on his side, away from Cor.
For a moment, Cor wonders if he’ll be asked to leave. If he’s gone too far.
“We should get some sleep,” Nyx says, and that fresh hurt is there in the jagged burr of his voice, too. “Still got a lot of messes that need cleaned up.”
Cor says nothing – and wonders if it’s because what his king needs is his silence, or if he’s simply got nothing of value to say. Instead, he focuses on healing another patch of bruising along the sharp wing of a shoulder blade, the rise and fall of mending skin and muscle beneath his hand with every breath Nyx takes.
And then it’s done, at least the biological aspect of it. Nyx’s mental scars are deeper and far more insidious, immune to even a guardian’s magic.
Still, he hesitates to withdraw, for both their sakes.
“Sorry,” Nyx says, and it’s true.
“Don’t be.” Cor leans back and rests the back of his head against the headboard, doggedly maintaining that lone point of contact long after he feels Nyx’s consciousness slip away.
