Chapter Text
but I am learning slowly
to love the dark days, the steaming hills,
the air with gossiping mosquitoes,
and to sip the medicine of bitterness,
so that when you emerge, my sister,
parting the beads of the rain,
with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,
all will not be as it was, but it will be true
“We will grant you our light. But know it will set when the sun rises, and the price for it will be your life.”
A worthy trade, he thinks through the pain and exhaustion; to give hope to others he need keep none for himself. What’s one man compared to the future of a world?
He is ready to sign, to swear his life away; the words rest at the tip of his tongue. And then––
“No.” The voice of King Regis interrupts his easy agreement, ponderously slow and low enough to echo in his bones. “I have given this one a task.”
“He fulfills it.”
“Not yet.”
“You are young to challenge us.”
“Actually,” Nyx grunts out, reaching for the fraying rope of hope; whether to save himself or hang himself he does not know, “maybe you should listen to the new guy.”
The kings rumble their disapproval, but if he cared for their approval he wouldn’t be here cursing them for their uselessness, their apathy. The giants around him shift; he gets the sense he’s missing out on some sort of argument. He stifles a comment about wasting time. He’s said his piece; he’ll pay whatever he must to keep her safe. To give someone out there the chance for a brighter dawn.
After what feels like an eternity––it cannot be more than a handful of seconds, but time is strange in this in-between place––the Lucii speak, sound washing over him like the pounding surf.
“Very well. Our gift shall hold until daybreak. As for you life, you may keep it so long as you keep your duty.”
Nyx grins, bloody and crooked and victorious around the pain. “A bargain. Great. Where do I sign?”
The air smells like rain.
It’s a round smell, rain, heavy and electric, and the princess stirs next to him, tucking flyaway hair behind her ear as she leans out the window to feel the breeze. He spares a momentary glance away from the road––it’s empty anyways, not like anyone’s going to run into them if he takes his eyes off the winding asphalt for a second––and eyes the grey clouds gathering overhead. Just their luck, really.
Though, maybe it’ll finally wash the scent of smoke out of the air. That’ll be something.
“You should roll up your window, highness,” he says, eyes back on the road. She pulls her head inside and turns to look at him; he catches a glimpse of her hair swinging around out of the corner of one eye. “Might get damp.”
“A little rain has yet to harm anyone,” she tells him, but she rolls up the window anyways, cranking the handle so that the glass creeps up in fits and starts. Sealed off like this, the air in the car is still and dry, and the A/C rattles and does absolutely nothing to alleviate the late spring heat. In the still air, he’s hyperaware of everything: his breathing, her breathing, the sweat gathering down his back, the smoke-and-flowers scent of her. He keeps his eyes fixed on the road. It winds on, a ribbon of asphalt through the dusty no-man’s-land stretching in every direction. The grey rain clouds blot out the sun, hang heavy and low over the world. Behind them, they blend in with the smoke rising from the shattered remains of the city.
He turns his eyes to the road. The past is what it is. Only way to go is forwards, hero.
The rain starts slow, an unsteady patter of droplets on the windshield that swells to a sweeping downpour. Wind gusts past them, kicking up water and churning dust to mud in equal measure until the road disappears in a hazy grey sheet, and the need to run––to drive as far as they can without stopping or looking back, to get her as far as possible from the burning city in their wake––wars with common sense.
If it were only him, he’d keep on until the rain stopped or he ran out of gas. But it’s not, and he’s got a duty to see to, so he eases the car from the road and turns it off, engines giving a final splutter that is swallowed by the sluicing rain.
She looks at him, eyes curiosity-sharp. “Why are we stopping?”
“Too dangerous to drive,” he replies, rolling the building cramp out of his neck. “I’m supposed to keep you safe, not get you killed in a car accident.”
She looks like she wants to argue––her lips purse together, mouth narrow and challenging––but she doesn’t. “Very well.”
It’s a little unnerving, the acquiescence, especially since she hasn’t agreed to a single thing in the entirety of this mess. Even their seating arrangement had been an argument. He’d wanted her to sit in the back, where he could keep an eye on her, but––
(“You are not my chauffeur.”
“Actually, princess, I am. And your bodyguard.”
“Then you may guard me better from the front seat.”
And, well, he doesn’t argue with that.)
He shrugs. “You may want to get some sleep.”
The look she fixes him with could force the king to–– could force anyone to bend a knee. He frowns right back.
“You have been driving since daybreak,” she says. “If either of us needs rest, it is you.”
“I’m supposed to be looking after you. Maybe you forgot?”
“I can look after myself for an hour.”
“Princess––”
“We are not going anywhere while this rain keeps up, no?”
He frowns. “No,” he allows, slowly.
“Then rest while we have the protection of the weather. I will wake you when it clears.” He presses his lips together, trying to decide how much he wants to argue––a lot, actually, even though she has a point; maybe he wants to argue because she has a point––and her face softens. “Trust me,” she tells him, and something in his chest loosens.
“As soon as this lets up,” he says, a warning or a request or–– things get fuzzy around her, don’t fit quite so neatly into place. He thinks he sees the hint of a smile in the lines around her eyes.
“I promise.”
He believes her.
The rain makes for a sweeping lullaby, a steady hum all around, and the inside of the car is warm and still and smells of the princess, smoke-and-flowers, and he before he knows it he is asleep.
He wakes to a hand on his shoulder and an ache in his neck and a weariness that digs into his bones, and in the hazy moment of confusion between sleep and wake he thinks he’s fallen asleep in a transport, half-expects to blink his eyes open to Crowe’s fond exasperation and Libertus’ teasing and Pelna steady equilibrium.
Except. The air smells like flowers and smoke and rain, still and musty, and the voice quietly murmuring his name belongs to no Glaive he knows. His eyes snap open and he sits up in a rush.
The princess flinches back and he shakes himself out of it, forces his shoulders to drop, evens his breathing. This is no troop transport. They are not on their way to the front lines because there are no more front lines.
“What time is it?” he asks, and what he means is––
“You slept not quite an hour,” she replies, understanding. “The rain has let up.”
It has, leaving a hazy grey mist in its wake. He runs a hand through his hair and rolls his neck.
“Thanks.”
“I promised,” she tells him, eyebrow cocked ever so slightly, as if saying I told you so. He lets it go, wipes the sleep out of his eyes instead.
“Should be a gas station coming up. We’ll refuel, get some new clothes. Something less princess-y.”
She doesn’t protest, because she’s smart and knows the two of them can’t drive across the country dressed as Oracle and Glaive without drawing far too much attention to themselves. Though the thought of seeing her in something so everyday as blue jeans is–– is––
He scrubs the image of Lady Lunafreya in something so mundane as jeans and a t-shirt out of his mind and wrestles the car into gear, pulling back onto the road in a squelch of mud and exhaust.
“You should sleep,” he says as they pick up speed. The wipers slide lazily across the windshield, flicking aside the film of rain gathering on the glass. “I’ll wake you up when we get there. Promise.”
She hums something that sounds like agreement and goes quiet; when he chances a look over at her she’s leaning against the window with her eyes closed, hair escaping from its complicated braids and curling around her face. He drags his eyes back to the road and their long circle west away from the city. He’s here to protect her. Not to look. Not to listen. Not to think.
Yeah, well. Look where that got them.
He fiddles with the radio to give himself something to do, static fuzzing out a song he’s fairly sure is popular right now. The sound clears as they drive, singer crooning about squandered love, and he sighs and turns off the useless air conditioning unit and taps along to the melody, Insomnia a curling pillar of smoke to their left as they eat up the miles to the next bastion of civilization.
They pull into Hammerhead as the sun begins to set, light slanted and golden through the awning of the rest stop now that the clouds have broken up and the mist has burned away. The light catches on the dripping eaves, makes the whole gas station glitter like it’s more than chrome and engine grease.
He wakes the princess with a cleared throat, and she blinks slowly back to consciousness. There’s a red mark on her forehead where she’s been pressed against the window and her complicated braids are well and truly ruined, and he can’t scrub away the smile creeping across his face at seeing her so normal.
“Rise and shine, princess.”
She stifles a yawn behind a hand, and his smile grows. “Where are we?”
He nods to the sign slowly rotating above them. “Hammerhead. Gas station.”
“Have you the gil?”
“I’ve got enough.” He’s got what’s on his person, which should get them what they need: gas, fresh clothes for the princess, food. They’ll be roughing it from here on out, but that can’t be helped. Speed––getting the princess to whatever modicum of safety they can find––is the most important thing, now.
She brushes her hair out of her eyes, makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it face at her pale reflection in the windshield. “How may I assist?”
“Just, keep a low profile,” he says. “I’d like to be quick.”
“You hope to continue through the night?”
“I hope to keep going as long as we can. The quicker we get you where you’re supposed to be––”
Her expression clouds, but all she says is, “Yes, of course.”
He peels off the layers of his uniform before getting out of the car; it is far too recognizable. Then again, so is the princess, but there’s not much to do for that besides hope the mess in Insomnia is keeping people off the roads, or that she looks out of place enough that no one recognizes her.
He wasn’t made for this espionage crap.
The door shuts hard behind her as she steps out of the car, and for a moment he watches her stretch through the window before tossing the mass of his gear into the backseat and joining her. The air is cooler than it was earlier, washed clean by the rain. He shivers in his shirtsleeves. She seems unfazed by the chill, ash-stained hem of her dress drifting with the breeze.
“Here.” He flips her ten gil over the roof of their banged up, borrowed ride. “For gas.”
“Where are you going?”
“Shopping. Try to stay out of trouble.”
“I’ll do my best,” she promises, and she’s wearing that hint of a smile again, as if at least part of this is a joke. Which, well, maybe it is. A princess and a soldier pull up to a gas station...
Someone’s got a terrible sense of humor.
For a moment he wonders if it’s even safe to leave her here while he ducks inside the shop, and the moment’s hesitation catches in his chest, sends adrenaline surging through him, and he curls his hands into fists at his side so he will not reach for his knives––which are half useless, he can’t use that magic anyways, the king is dead, and–– Focus, Ulric.
He takes a breath. The princess is staring at him, concern painted across her face. He unclenches his fists.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah.” There’s not even anyone else here; the station is practically deserted. Get it together. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m gonna find you something less, uh, conspicuous. What d’you think about hoodies?”
She ignores the joke. “I will be fine,” she promises, like she can read his fucking mind, and he wants to be irritated but mostly it just soothes his nerves, loosens the tightness in his chest.
He turns his back and strides into the shop before he can say something he’ll regret, pokes through the paltry selection of pre-packaged foodstuffs and spends more time than he’d like chatting up the shopkeep, trying to figure out where he can buy a clean shirt. Turns out they only sell tourist gear here.
“But if you try Longwythe down the road––”
“Great, thanks. How much’ll this cost?”
In the end, it’s more gil than he’d like to spend but he comes away with an oversized hoodie, Hammerhead Station emblazoned across the front in mustard yellow, a pack of six plain white t-shirts, a handful of toiletries, and some gas station junk food with little-to-no nutritional value. He adds a scarf to the mix, a soft blue thing, ostensibly so the princess’ll be warm but mostly for reasons he refuses to admit to himself. He tips the shopkeep for his help and brings the bundle back to the car.
The abandoned car.
His heart plummets and his pulse jumps. He dumps the bag in the back seat and looks around, but there’s no one out here, no one except a young blonde leaning against the wall outside the garage.
“Where’s––”
“Your girl?” asks the blonde with a cocky little smile. “Went to freshen up.”
“She’s not my girl,” he says, automatic. The blonde’s eyebrows climb.
“Right, course not. Don’t need to worry though, she’s just over there.” The blonde points, and if he cranes his neck around the gas pump he sees her, hair a simple braid, Crowe’s hairpin glinting in the evening light, some of the ash and dust cleaned off her face. She meets his eyes across the lot and smiles, and the tightness in his chest eases.
“Right. Thanks. Um…” She wears no nametag. Not that there’s really anywhere to put one, given the amount of clothing she isn’t wearing.
“Cindy,” she fill in with a wide grin. “This is my granda’s garage, but he’s a little tied up at the moment, so if there’s anything you need, you just ask me.”
He offers a smile, a little forced but serviceable. “Thanks, Cindy.”
“No problem.” She leaves with a wink, curls bouncing. The princess joins him, glancing between Cindy and the car.
“Is everything alright?”
“Yeah, fine. Here.” He rummages through the bag for a moment and holds the hoodie out. “Best they’ve got.”
The idea comes to him in a flash, and he shoves the tourist crap into her hands before dashing after the upbeat blonde. “Hey, hey! Cindy!”
She pauses in the opening of the garage, one eyebrow raised. “You decide you need something after all?”
“Know anywhere here I could buy some clothes?”
“Well, we sell some stuff at the shop––”
“No, I mean. Real clothes. Something, uh, normal.”
Her expression goes cautious, almost calculating. “Wha’d’ya mean by normal?”
Nyx glances back over his shoulder at the princess. The oversized Hammerhead hoodie clashes horribly with the fine material of the dress underneath. She smiles when she catches him staring and he snaps back around to Cindy, ears warm. She frowns at him, setting sun throwing shadows across her face.
“She’s really not your girl, is she?”
“No.”
“She’s the princess.”
So much for going unrecognized. “Uh. Yeah.”
Cindy settles her hands on her hips. “Thought she was in Insomnia. Wasn’t she supposed to be getting married?”
Nyx hesitates. There’s no real way to beat around this particular bush. She’s going to find out sooner or later. So he grits his teeth, and––
“Niflheim invaded. Insomnia’s fallen.”
She blanches, sagging like the air’s been knocked out of her. He’d love to take a moment to soften the blow but they’re short on things like time and gentle truths these days. “We need to get out of here, to meet the prince. If you can do anything to help...”
She gathers herself carefully, straightens, sets her thoughts in order. “Right, yeah. Um, just wait here a sec.”
“What––” he starts, but she’s already gone, disappearing into the gloom of the garage. A moment later she returns with a man, half-familiar.
The man frowns, giving him a long once-over. “Who’s this, Cindy?”
“This is my grandad, Cid Sophiar,” she introduces, and he recognizes the man’s face, and relief sweeps through Nyx. “Grandad, this is, uh––”
“Nyx Ulric,” Nyx answers. “I’m a member of the Kingsglaive.”
Sophiar perks up. “The Kingsglaive! What’re you doing at my pit stop out here?”
“Insomnia’s fallen,” says Cindy, and Sophiar’s excitement fades as quickly as it arrived. He nods slowly, sighing long and heavy, as if he knew. Seems to be a lot of that going around these days.
“So that’s why,” he mutters to himself, and doesn’t deign to explain. For a moment he stares across the garage, empty and distant, before he shakes himself, eyeing Nyx. “What d’you need, boy?”
“Anything you can spare.” He’s not about to pass by any bit of luck they can scrape together. “Change of clothes, food––”
“I’m sure I’ve got something Lady Lunafreya can wear,” Cindy volunteers.
“We’ll pay of course,” Nyx promises, and Cindy exchanges a look with Sophiar, one he can’t read.
“We’ve got a trailer, if you want to stay the night,” Sophiar offers. Nxy shakes his head.
“Appreciate the offer, but we need to keep moving.”
“Well, if you change your mind,” Sophiar shrugs. “Cindy’ll bring you something to wear. Best get back to your princess, Glaive.”
His princess. Heh.
“Thank you,” he replies, and the old man waves him away, already turning back to whatever work has his attention. Nyx watches him go, wonders if he should say something––apologize, ask if there is anything he can do, say something more than just thanks.
In the end, he just sighs and steps out of the shadow of the garage into the shimmering blue of the gathering twilight.
“Is everything alright?” the princess asks when he joins her again. The gas pump blinks zeros, tank full.
“Some good luck,” he tells her, tugging the gas nozzle out of the car. “This is Cid Sophiar’s place.”
“The king’s friend?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.” She’s quiet for a moment, long enough that he looks up from feeding coins into the gas pump and look at her. She looks tired, wan and hollow. He looks back to the pump, clicks the nozzle back into place, keeps his hands busy so he will not have to look at her, will not have to think about the slow-moving horror rippling out around them. “Does he know?”
“Yeah,” he nods, pressing his lips tight together for a moment as his jaw works, gathering himself. “I told him.”
She nods, hands pressed against the side of the car, and he turns towards her, hand outreached to offer, what? Support? Companionship? His undying loyalty?
He’s already given her that. That and his life, but apparently fate has a particularly fucked up sense of humor, because he chose to die for her but here he is, still standing at her side, and all he can think to be is thankful.
Cindy saves him from himself, bouncing up with a canvas shoulder bag in one hand and a plastic takeout bag in the other.
“Clothes,” she says, holding the bag to the princess. “And provisions.”
“How much do we owe you?” Nyx asks.
“It’s on the house.”
“We can’t––” the princess begins, trying to hand the bag back, but Cindy shakes her head, reaches out a hand to stop her.
“It’s nothing, really. They’re just a couple old things I was gonna drop off at one of those resell shops next time I made the trip to Longwythe. You’re saving me the trouble, swear.”
“Oh.” The princess glances between the bag and Cindy’s outstretched hand, expression inscrutable. “Are you certain?”
“Yeah, Lady Lunafreya. Anything to help, it’s a real honor.”
“Thank you. And many thanks to your grandfather. You have done us a great service.”
“Our pleasure. Are you sure you don’t want to stay the night?”
The princess looks to him, and he shakes his head, almost imperceptible. They can’t waste the time, not if they want to make it to Altissia before the Nifs pick up their scent. Stopping at all is a risk, but part of seeing the princess safely out of Lucis is making sure she arrives in one piece, which means things like rest and food and keeping a low profile. Surely they can manage two out of three.
The princess favors Cindy with a smile. “I’m afraid we cannot. There is too far yet to go.”
“Well then. Safe travels, your highness. I hope you find the prince soon.”
“Us too,” Nyx says, yanking the passenger-side door open so he can drop the warm food within. Cindy nods a goodbye and takes her leave. For a moment the two stand there. The princess’s hair glints under the bright station lights.
“You should, uh. Go change,” he says, mostly suggestion. “I’ll take the hoodie.”
“But I like it,” she protests with a twinkle in her eye that has him snorting.
“Sure you do, highness.”
She’s smiling that faint little smile again, the one that catches under his skin and tugs, and he grits his teeth together and watches her leave, eyes scanning the rest stop. There’s no one else here; even the skies are clear after the day’s rain. He can’t pinpoint the source of the buzz at the back of his head, the way his the hair at the back of his neck prickles. Ozone in the atmosphere, maybe. Trouble on the horizon, certainly.
Promises made, perhaps. Our hope goes with you now. Keep your duty. A shiver scrabbles up his spine, chill digging in deep, and he shakes it away, eyes combing the station again.
Still nothing.
His arm throbs. Carefully he uncrosses them and rubs at the knot in his shoulder, clenches and unclenches his fist. His skin feels tight and brittle around his bones, and now that he’s looking he can see the spiderweb cracks where the ring’s magic coursed through him, left him half-dead. He brushes the lacework scar across his cheek; it’s hot to the touch.
The princess returns while he’s got the pads of his fingers pressed to his face, slipping into his field of vision in ill-fitting cargo pants and a loose blouse. The breeze picks at the strands of hair that have escaped her plait to frame her face. She looks like something that has drifted in from a dream, utterly unlike the carefully-composed princess insistent to talk upon the rooftop not three days ago and also exactly the same: same iron spine, same gentle eyes, same unyielding fire, same effortless grace.
She stutters to a stop a few feet away from him. “What?” she asks, head cocked to the side in concern. He lets his hand fall away from his face, tries to shove the complicated jumble of his thoughts out of his head. It’s like trying to cram the blood-and-muscle mess of his heart back into his ribcage, a lost cause before he even starts.
“Nothing, highness,” he manages. Our hope goes with you now. She’s more than a princess, and he has a job to do. “Ready to get going?”
“There are things for you here, too,” she says, holding the bag out. He takes it with a frown, expecting perhaps an old t-shirt of Cid’s, or maybe a pair of grease-stained jeans.
Neatly folded on top of Cindy’s hand-me-downs is the Hammerhead hoodie.
He can’t strangle the bark of laughter before it slips through his lips. When he looks up to meet her eyes, she’s smiling.
“Thanks. Uh, food’s still warm.” He grabs the takeout out of the car through the window, passing the bag to her before opening the passenger seat door so she can settle in. “Dig in. I’ll be back.”
He leaves her there, breathing in the smell of warm food, and trusts Cid and Cindy to keep an eye on things for long enough to wash the soot and ash out of his hair. He did what he could earlier, but he’ll be happiest when he can finally have a proper shower.
For now though, the sink will suffice.
He hasn’t, he thinks dully, seen himself since–– Well.
It’s not as bad as he thought. The scarring across his face is faint, a Lichtenberg fractal creeping across the his left cheek and up past his hairline. It catches the light at certain angles and disappears at others, alternately silver-white and gone. The burn on his arm is mostly-healed, angry pink in some places and the skin a little too smooth and soft for his liking, but otherwise fine.
Then there’s the scarring from the ring, like his face, lace lattice of thin pale lines around his hand and wrist and creeping up his arm, raised and smooth and hot to the touch, as though the ring’s magic still burns under his skin––even though it doesn’t, even though it burned away with the sunrise. He traces a finger along a spidering branch until it reaches his elbow and fades away. He clenches and unclenches his fist. His skin still feels too tight around his bones, but nothing seems wrong.
No more so than expected, at least.
There’s also a splatter-paint spread of bruises across his torso and back, and he can feel more down his legs. He dabs unhelpfully at the handful of abrasions across his chest where his armor didn’t dampen enough of the impact to keep from breaking skin, but that’s what happens when a couple dozen buildings fall on you. And he thinks he may have broken a rib or six––funny how you don’t notice those things until you stop to take stock.
He cleans off the ash and blood as best he can with a few paper towels and hand soap, brushes flakes of ash and concrete out of his hair with his fingers, washes his face and brushes his teeth with tepid tap water, and drags on a fresh shirt and the hoodie.
It really is comfortable. No wonder the princess wanted to keep it.
She’s still eating when he gets in the car, licking some sort of hot sauce off her fingers, and he’s not looking he’s not.
She pauses when he tugs the door shut behind him. “Would you like yours?”
“Later,” he says. “Oh and, uh. This is for you.” He holds out the scarf, soft and the color of the sea, and she carefully wipes her fingers on her napkin before she takes it.
“Thank you, Nyx,” she says, running the fabric through her fingers. He presses his lips together and drags his eyes away from her, flicks on the headlights and directs his attention to wrestling their stolen car into gear.
She wraps the scarf carefully around her neck and returns to her sandwich as they pull out of Hammerhead and press further on across Leide.
The dashboard clock reads 10:27 in blinking green figures when they pull off the side of the road, headlights cutting a swath of yellow through the darkness. They bump along for a few minutes, long enough for the uneven ground beneath them to wake the princess where she snores quietly next to him.
“Where are we?”
“Two hours west of Hammerhead,” he says, flicking the lights off and turning the car off. The desert wind whistles past them. “Give or take. Middle of nowhere. We can rest here and keep going in the morning.”
“Camping?”
“You can sleep in the car, highness. I’ll take the ground.”
“A gentleman, I see. There’s no need to–– oh, your face.”
She reaches out, hand closing around his chin so she can angle him in a specific direction, and he yelps. “Princess, what––”
“Is it hurting?”
“Why, cause it’s killing you?”
“No.” She frowns at him, runs a finger along the spidering scars on his cheek, and––
“Ow!”
He yanks his head back, hissing as pain blooms across his face, sparking beneath her fingers and radiating outwards like lightning, leaving spots dancing in front of his eyes. He clenches his teeth as the shocks fade.
“What the fuck was that?”
“Look,” she says, flipping on the lights inside the car and pulling down the visor so he can look in the tiny mirror there.
The faded lines of his scars are an angry red, creeping further across his cheek, and as he watches they flicker with the crackling fire of the king’s power. Experimentally, he opens one hand, expecting fire, but instead a spike of pain lances up his arm, and when he looks down at his hand the scarring there looks darker, almost ashy. Much fresher than it had been hours earlier.
As for you life, you may keep it so long as you keep your duty.
Oh, those clever bastards.
The princess lays a careful hand against his unscarred cheek, angling him back to look at her, fingers splayed over scar tissue. “Let me,” she murmurs softly, and warmth bleeds from her hand like ink in water, slowly spreading across his face and washing the pain away. Her eyes flutter shut as she works, and he stares, afraid to blink, afraid to breathe.
(He was unconscious last time she did this, half-dead in the dawn light with Libertus standing guard and the smoke thick over the city. All he remembers is waking up, wrung-out but still alive, and her leaning over him with a smile, Welcome back, hero.
Libertus gave him no end of grief for that before they parted ways, Libertus to mop up the mess of whatever cell he’d stumbled into and Nyx to see the princess safely to Altissia, and beyond.)
“Hand,” she orders, eyes still closed, reaching for his wrist. For a moment he doesn’t understand, then she tugs on his wrist and he lays his hand palm-down in her own. The half-familiar sensation of seeping warmth wells in his hand, caught between bones and skin, then rolls up his arm, leeching away an ache he hadn’t even noticed until it disappears. A furrow forms between her brows, a narrow tickmark marring the smoothness of her face, then she sighs and her eyes open, exhaustion painted across her face. “There.”
“Thank you,” he says, and his fingers tighten around her hand almost on instinct, and for a wild moment he thinks maybe he should bring her hand up, kiss her knuckles like the gentleman she jokes he is. It would be easy; she holds him just as as he holds her, fingers slim and strong and still warm from whatever gods-given power she wields.
But. She’s a princess, she’s the hope of a world, and he’s just a king’s soldier who couldn’t save his king, living on borrowed time. Keep your duty.
He lets her go, and pretends not to notice the way she flexes her fingers as she slowly withdraws.
“I thought it had healed,” she tells him, like an apology, and he shakes his head.
“I don’t think it’s that easy. But, um. Thanks, princess.”
Her mouth twists, wry. “If we are to travel together, and in disguise, you must call me by my name. I would not want my title to give us away.”
“Right.” His mouth is strangely dry. “Lunafreya.” It feels like something akin to blasphemy, except he’s not really the god-fearing sort.
“Thank you, Nyx Ulric.”
He gets the sense she’s talking about more than just her name. He clears his throat.
“Right. Well. I’m gonna, uh, check the perimeter.” It comes out more of a question than a statement. Anything to get out of the cramped confines of the car, the buzzing in the air that makes his fingers twitch and burrows under his skin. She presses her lips together, nods her acceptance, and he slips out of the car into the soothing chill of the desert night.
He goes with the flashlight they found in the glove compartment and a kukri, sweeps outward in concentric circles, finding nothing but dust and rock. He takes longer than he needs, stays out until he can slot his thoughts back into something resembling order.
When he returns to the car, the princ–– Lunafreya lies curled in the back seat, hair across her face. She could be anyone, hand tucked under one cheek, shoes kicked off, mouth open and quietly snoring. It’s easy to forget, watching her sleep, who exactly she is. What she is.
Nyx digs the remains of his coat out from the back, dusts it off until it’s passably clean and spreads it over her, something to ward off the night’s chill. He tucks her hair behind one ear, gentle as he can. She turns into his hand ever so slightly, chasing the warmth, and he stills, afraid to wake her. But she merely sighs and burrows into the warmth of his coat. His heart beats double-time in his ribcage; every part of him wants to stay here, hand against her cheek while she sleeps, between her and the seeking monsters in the darkness, at her side as she crafts the future the world so desperately wants to see. Yearning wells in him strong enough to steal his breath.
He pulls away and she huffs quietly, hand curling tighter under her chin.
The front seat is hardly a comfortable bed, but he’s slept in worse. He tilts his head back against the peeling leather of the seat and closes his eyes, listens to the steady rhythm of her breathing behind him, quiet among the wind twisting around the car, the two of them the only living things for miles.
He’s so fucked.
When he blinks awake, there’s a strange woman outside the car.
He’s out the door before he can think, sleep burning away as he sinks into a defensive crouch familiar as his own heartbeat, weapons in hand and tension thrumming under his skin. A few ribs protest with a lightning twinge of pain that he firmly ignores in favor of assessing the threat.
It’s... well, it’s just a woman, actually, in a long black dress, chin tilted up slightly towards the sun rising on the horizon, eyes closed as if in meditation. Two dogs sit in front of her, a dark-and-pale matched set, tails wagging happily through the sand. Nyx narrows his eyes.
“Who are you?”
Behind him, the car door opens and slams shut again. “Gentiana!”
He relaxes, but only slightly, straightening so he can half-step in front of the princess, daggers still unsheathed. “You know her?” he asks Lunafreya, refusing to take his eyes off the woman.
“She is a Messenger. And a friend.”
Right. “And the dogs?”
“They are mine.”
Of course she has dogs that can find her out here in the middle of the desert. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised.
“I have come to speak with you,” Gentiana says, ignoring him entirely. Lunafreya steps up next to him, lays a placating hand on his forearm and he sheathes his kukris, making sure his displeasure reads clear across his face. “I bear important news for Oracle and girl.”
The princess turns back to him, sighs when she sees his expression. “I will be safe with her,” she promises, and he waves them away. This is one argument he doesn’t want to get into. Magic and battlefields he can deal with, talk of the gods and Oracles and mysterious Messengers he wants as little to do with as possible.
Though it looks like “as little as possible” is going to be a lot more than he’d like, watching Lunafreya and Gentiana speak together a good twenty paces off. One of the dogs, the pale one, barks. Nyx holds a hand out and both of them crowd in close to sniff, seem to find him acceptable because the dark one nudges under his hand so he can scratch him. He crouches in the dust behind the car, glancing up now and again to check in on Luna, as if she might disappear if he takes his eyes off her too long. Keep your duty.
“She’s a good woman, y’know,” he says to the dogs. The light one rolls over so Nyx can scratch her belly. The darker one sits back on his haunches and pants, tongue lolling. There’s something tied around his chest but he shies away when Nyx reaches for it, so he lets it go. “Not an ounce of sense, but a good woman.”
The dark one barks. Nyx hopes it’s agreement.
Eventually Lunafreya returns, her ethereal friend watching from a distance, eyes closed and expression utterly unreadable. Nyx keeps an eye on her while the princess kneels to murmur something to the dogs, who sit up and listen attentively. She doesn’t look much like a Messenger, or whatever he expects a Messenger to look like. Maybe there’s something slightly ageless about her face.
“Have you a pen?”
Nyx looks down. “What?”
Lunafreya is knelt in the dirt, sand pressed into the knees of her pants, one hand shielding her eyes as she looks up at him. “A pen. Have you got one?”
“I think there’s one in the glove compartment.”
She pushes herself to to feet and goes to the car, opening the door to rummage through the front seat while Nyx watches, bemused. Eventually she makes a small sound of victory and emerges with a pen in one hand to perch on the edge of the seat, one foot kicking through the dust and the other propped up on the running board as she bends over something. He trails her around the car, leaning against the side of the trunk to watch her write.
She doesn’t look up from her writing pen scratching across a page of cream-colored paper, but does respond to his looming with an answer to the question he’s telling himself not to ask. “It is a notebook I share with Noctis. A way to pass messages, from when we were young.”
“Passing love letters, princess?”
“Giving him news of our survival.”
Something in his chest tightens. “Right.”
“And I thought I asked you not call me princess.”
“Old habits,” he says in the shape of an apology, and she spares him a glance, lips twisting up in the shadow of a smile.
A moment later she finishes writing, calls the dogs to her with a whistle and affixes the small book to the harness the darker one wears. She rubs each of them between the ears.
“Go now. Find him. Godspeed, my friends.”
They take off at an easy lope, following the bend of the road back in the direction they came from the night before and disappearing from view. Lunafreya stretches a moment, rolling out her neck and shoulders from a night sleeping in the back of the car, and slides more fully into the passenger seat, closing the door behind her. Nyx steps up to lean through her window.
She looks up, expectant. “Shall we continue?”
“What about your friend?” Nyx asks. Lunafreya cocks her head, curious.
“Which friend?” she asks innocently, and Nyx straightens to point out Gentiana waiting two dozen paces away from them only to be met with the empty desert.
“Wha––?”
“Gentiana does not require simple methods of travel like you and I,” the princess assures him. “It is kind of you to think of her.”
Gods and Messengers. Right.
He stops at the trunk as he circles to the other side of the car, rummaging through their meagre supplies to grab a box of powdered donuts. The trunk he slams shut with more force necessary, taking a moment to press a fist against the dust-coated paint. He’d like to say it’s not what he signed up for, but it is, and he’d sign again in a heartbeat if it meant doing even a little good. Even for the princess. Especially for the princess.
He feels slightly better when he slides into the driver’s seat.
“Here,” he says, passing the donuts to Luna. “Breakfast."
She picks at the seal with muted curiosity and he turns the key in the ignition, sends the engine sputtering to life. He eases his foot off the clutch and they pull forward, arcing a slow loop back to the road. Luna offers him a donut, fingers dusted in powdered sugar, and he pops it in his mouth, hoping the sugar will do something to wake him up. For a moment he misses coffee, then shakes the thought away.
Next stop, he thinks, shifting gears as they reach the road, picking up speed along the two lane highway twisting through the wasteland that spreads like a quilt around them. Next stop they’ll sell some of the things they don’t need, he’ll take a job or two, buy the princess a proper pair of shoes so she’s not running around in those heels. And maybe get some coffee.
It’s the little things in life.
“Would you like another one?” Luna asks, a spot of powdered sugar smudged along her jaw, and it sends something flaring to life in his chest, magic-hot and just as dangerous. He takes the pastry with a crooked smile he can’t tamp down. She shares it, mouth a gentle bow.
“You’ve got something there,” he says gesturing to the spot of white on her face. She blinks twice, raises a finger to swipe it away and sucks the sugar off her finger. The desert breeze whips through the open window, catching her hair so that it dancers around her face.
Nyx turns his eyes back to the road, allows himself a moment to hold tight to the warmth in his chest.
Yeah. The little things.
The road eventually ends in a T junction, a north/south split along the border of Leide. On the horizon he can make out the verdant plains of the Duscae region. Right in front of them, a red light stares them down. He turns on the turn signal, more out of habit than anything else; they’ve yet to see another car on the road.
“No,” Lunafreya tells him as the car blinks for the left-hand turn. “We need to go north.”
“Excuse me?”
“I must visit the Disc of Cauthess.”
He hopes she’s joking. “Not really the time for sightseeing.”
“It’s not sightseeing,” she says, almost cross, and it’s nice to know she’s got real feelings under the whole duty-and-honor routine. “I must awaken Titan.”
It’s a testament to the amount of utter shit that’s gone down these past few days that he doesn’t argue about the possibility of waking something he’s not even sure he believed existed a week ago.
That doesn’t mean he’s on board with the idea.
“No way.”
“It is my duty.”
“Did that strange woman this morning tell you that?”
“Gentiana is an unyielding ally and has been a friend since I was a child.”
He manages to keep himself from slamming a fist into the steering wheel. “Oh, for the love of––”
“If you will not go with me, I will go alone.”
“What, you’re gonna walk there?”
She’s looking at him with that same look she wore before she jumped out of a crashing airship into a warzone. “If I must.”
Does she have any idea how insufferable she is? Yes, if the subtle crook of an eyebrow is anything to go by.
He bites back a curse and flips the turn signal to the right. She smiles next to him, all grateful and genuine, and his heart tightens in his ribcage. He digs his nails into the steering wheel, flakes of cracked leather sticking to the pads of his fingers. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles. She leans over the shift and presses a kiss to his cheek.
“I mean it. I know this is not easy, Nyx Ulric. Thank you for your help.”
He can feel his ears go hot as they turn down the narrow, two-lane road that will lead them north towards Duscae. He drags his attention back to the road, knuckles tight around the wheel. “‘S what I signed up for, princ–– Uh. Lunafreya.”
“A willing choice does not always make burdens lighter,” she says at his side, and she sounds almost sad, and he doesn’t want to think about that, he doesn’t. He lingers on it anyways, thinking of her, and the prince, and the winding path before her, before them. My duty is my destiny.
Yeah. She’s not the only one.
The radio splutters, three part harmony of a song he doesn’t know fuzzing out into static as they get farther and farther from Hammerhead, driving north into the foothills of the mountains where the highway will bring them west to the Disc. Lunafreya fiddles with it for a moment, then seems to decide it a lost cause and thumbs the thing off. No air conditioning and no radio. Wonderful.
Nyx cranks his window down to let in the breeze; Lunafreya rests her elbow on the frame of hers, fingers tapping along the roof. The wind catches her scarf, one end trailing behind her, a ribbon of color against the sepia dust of the desert. It flickers and dances out of the corner of his eye.
They drive for hours, wheels eating up the miles as the wind down the country road, twisting through the valleys of Leide, enormous pillars of rock standing guard above them. The emptiness stretches around them, miles and miles of nothing but dust and rock. Such space dwarfs them both, dares them to try to fill it, and Nyx does not even know where to begin. The quiet is almost a third passenger, welling between them. The hum of the engine is a faint, muted thing in the endless desert.
It sets Nyx’s teeth on edge.
“Why did you join the Kingsglaive?” Lunafreya asks suddenly into the whipcord-tight silence, cracking it wide open, and Nyx’s hands tighten around the steering wheel at the unexpected sound, car wobbling slightly with his surprise. It takes him a moment to gather his thoughts.
“The king saved my life when I was a kid,” he answers slowly. “I wanted to serve. Repay that debt, I guess.” Not that he did, in the end. Years he put into the Glaive, for hearth and home, and there’s not a single one now that isn’t out there burning and broken.
They featured in his dreams last night, smoke and fire and rubble, the ruins of Galahd and Insomnia blurring together and his sister screaming above it all, high and frightened as she fell. It turns his stomach.
Lunafreya’s hand settles on his shoulder. He glances aside to her and back to the road, unwilling to meet her gaze. The weight of it presses upon him, firm and gentle both, and he can’t decide if it soothes or irritates.
Both, he decides. She’s good with paradoxes like that.
“What?” He doesn’t mean to snap, but the word comes out sharp anyways, barbed. She squeezes his shoulder.
“You did all you could,” she tells him. It’s the sort of thing that would be empty platitudes from anyone else but from her, he almost believes it. “You honor his memory.”
He swipes an angry hand across his mouth and digs into the gas pedal harder than necessary, car jumping forward.
“Sure,” he says. “Yeah.”
“You remind me of him,” she says, retracting her hand, and now he does look over, watches as she stares out the window, almost wistful.
“You knew him,” he says, invitation and question and statement all in one. She nods.
“He visited when I was younger. Before the occupation.” Bitterness wells in her voice, honest hatred, and he knows that flame, the one that burns deep in his gut and keeps him moving forward, keeps him paying out his own blood to keep other sheltered from helplessness and hopelessness in the face of the metal and magic war machine that casts its shadow upon the continent. “He tried to save me, when General Glauka killed my mother.”
His stomach churns at the reminder of Drautos’ betrayal but he firmly ignores it, glancing briefly aside at her. “Tried?”
The weight of her sigh could bend iron. “I chose to stay.”
“In Tenebrae?” He sees the shape of her nod out of the corner of his eye. “Why?”
“My brother needed me. The people needed me. I was––am––the Oracle. I could not abandon my home.”
His mouth pulls into a crooked line, a facsimile of a smile. “Duty again, huh?”
“Mine is a vital task,” she says, sounds more like she’s quoting than speaking for herself. “The Chosen King must forge a covenant with the Astrals to burn away the darkness at the heart of our star.”
“And that’s why you have to get to the Disc.”
“Yes.”
Nyx sucks in a deep breath, blows it out slow and even as the shape of things begins to take shape. It’s all myth and story, gods and monsters, the sort of thing he hasn’t believed in since he was a child, and he’s not sure he believes in it now.
But he believes in her. That’s enough.
“Seems like a lot of weight to put on the young King’s shoulders,” he says, grim and quiet.
“Yes,” Lunafreya agrees with a sigh, face drawn and tired, mask of certainty set aside for a moment. Enough with the brave princess act. “It is. And in the end, I can do little but stand by his side.”
“Hey,” he says, dragging her attention back to him. He takes his eyes off the road long enough to meet her gaze, make certain she knows he means what he says. “You’re not alone either. I’ll stand at your side as long as you need.”
Her face softens, and in a moment of weakness he thinks he might give anything for her to always look this gentle, to look so weightless. “Thank you, Nyx.”
“Anytime. Princess.”
The gentleness slips away, replaced by a tired sort of admonishment, and he lets himself grin wide as he turns back to the road, content with the point scored.
“Are you always so dismissive of authority?” she asks lightly. Nyx snorts.
“I’m not at liberty to say, ma’am.”
He feels her staring at him again. “So you can be professional.”
“When the mood strikes.”
“I can’t imagine you made many friends with the Lucian military.”
“We didn’t spent much time working with them.” He sighs, mind conjuring memories of nights on the front lines with the rest of the Glaive. “Mostly it was just us doing whatever the King needed. Holding the line somewhere so a town could be evacuated. Defending key points. Running the odd covert operation.”
“Like your friend who was sent to find me.”
“Crowe, yeah. She was a good soldier. Better friend.”
She hesitates. “I’m… sorry, Nyx.”
He swallows down the lump in his throat, banishes the memories to smoke. “Don’t be,” he tells her, and he thinks he manages to mask the thickness in his voice. “She knew what she was getting into. She be glad to know you’re safe.”
“And that you’re guarding me?” asks Lunafreya.
Nyx thinks she’d probably be giving him no end of shit, but he keeps that to himself. “Yeah.”
“I wish I could have known her.”
“Yeah,” he says, blink away the blurring of his vision that threatens to obscure the road. “Yeah, me too.”
They lapse into silence after that, but it’s a lighter one than that endured before, and Nyx feels a weight lifted off his chest as they press north.