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He picks himself up from the ground, rolls his shoulders and settles into a ready stance, meets blank eyes and smiles.
There’s humour there, he thinks, in the blank eyes and behind the sharp teeth, the vicious flash of ‘danger’.
It’s harder to find then he thinks it used to be.
Bly doesn’t know if that’s because of him, or because of time and the war, or because Neyo has really changed so much.
There was a time where Bly knew him, not as well as 6 knew him, not anywhere close to how Edee knew each other, but he knew him once and maybe they would’ve been close but—
Neyo’s eyes are cold and Bly thinks of tears on his face and blood in his mouth from biting his cheek so hard and an arm shattered from wrist to collarbone and Priest’s cold eyes watching them.
He dodges and Neyo huffs, glares and presses forward.
Here is something Bly will never tell anyone; he never thought of Priest's training as an honour, not even when he was small and unaware of just what that training was.
Here is a fact written into his bones, the thing he carries like the press of a dead vod’s hand against his chest: He is partly to blame for the fact that Neyo was taken, that no one thought it would be a bad thing.
Here’s the thing, Bly is good at watching, good at listening, he doesn’t catch everything, is sometimes too involved to make the right observations or decisions, but in the Before, he’d known Priest wasn’t good, that being around him would end bad. He’d seen how his Cadets acted and he’d come to his own silent hypothesis.
Here’s the unforgivable thing: He kept it to himself, even after hearing 17 and 6 talk about Priest watching Edee, he’d kept it to himself
He hadn’t wanted to be right, and at the same time hadn’t wanted to say something and be proven wrong and punished for it.
So in the end he’d stayed silent.
And Priest had asked 6 for Neyo, for Two-six, and it had been an honour until they’d realized how often Priest’s cadets ended up injured.
Neyo grabs his arm and twists and Bly moves with the jerk, winces and grapples his way out of the hold.
Neyo narrows his eyes and for a second they are not in the training rooms with Star and Valor, they are not Commanders.
For a second Bly is small and terrified and not Bly anymore, for a second he is ‘52, staring up at Two-six in terror as the echo of a snap rings out in the rooms, as Neyo’s face stays blank and uncaring. The taste of blood flooding his mouth as he bites down on a terrified scream.
(“Why isn’t he crying,” a voice from the past blubbers, the shaky voice high with terror, “why isn’t he scared, why doesn’t he feel anything anymore, 6 where’s Two-six. 6 where’s Two-six”)
Bly lunges low, kicks out at Neyo and feints low and right, moves high and left at the last minute, and the feel of bones under his hands shakes him for less than a second.
Less than a second is all Neyo needs.
Bly hits the mat on his back with a groan, gets a hand to his neck and a knee against his kidney lightning-quick after.
Neyo tilts his head, grins and it’s all vicious amusement.
Bly thinks he remembers a time when the vicious part of the amusement was softer, was all teasing grins and light laughter.
He thinks he can recognize the shape of him, of Two-six in Neyo, thinks it used to be something more recognizable than this.
“Give,” Bly says, rolls his eyes when Neyo’s eyes spark challenging and his grin grows sharp.
He thinks he half remembers the way soft hands, small hands, reached out and pressed candy into his hands, the way arms wrapped gentle around him and a laugh tickled the air around his ear.
He doesn’t remember when he lost that, but he thinks it started when he looked at the way Priest watched them all with cold, dead, eyes and the way Priest’s Cadets were all that same blank faced wrong.
Hindsight is always 20/20, and Bly’s chest burns.
(‘He’s okay,’ 6 says, and his voice is so calm and ‘52 can’t stop crying, because Two-six’s arm was broken and he was hurt and he didn’t care and Priest didn’t care and no one cared, ‘it’s okay, he’ll be okay, what are you talking about Cadet, of course he still feels, it’s okay, this is just to teach him so he doesn’t get hurt like that again.’)
Bly laughs as he stands and Neyo steps back, “Good spar,” he says and Neyo’s eyes are sharp and watchful, but not blank.
Bly is not Wolffe, is not Cody or Ponds, can’t reach out like they can, can’t lighten the mood like them, can't shake someone out of their head. He’s not like Edee, can’t poke and prod and tease in the same way, will always end up just the slightest bit short.
He’s himself, has never managed to be more than that. A little too soft, needing information to steady himself a little too much, too focused on needing a plan, too convinced things will go wrong.
He is not the best of the Shebse, not the closest to Neyo. He is just himself, average.
Neyo steps back and tilts his head, sharp teeth and bloodied edges and Bly thinks of soft hands tangled together and light laughter that grated against the ears.
The words bubble up in his throat, a useless apology for something no one can fix now, unwanted and unasked for.
Guilt churns in his chest and he tries to set it aside, it will do Neyo no good, would be only for Bly, and he’s trying not to be selfish, trying not to cling to the things around him with white-knuckles, fingers digging into skin.
Bly stands opposite of who Two-six has been built into and bites his cheek until he stops trying to look for the echoes of who Neyo used to be.
It’s not fair to anyone.
Bly huffs, stretches out his neck and winces, asks, casual, “Valor?”
Neyo raises an eyebrow and shrugs, “They’re fine.”
He tilts his head, face impassive, and it's unnerving, to see that face so emotionless.
(‘Priest takes all the emotions out of them you know, just scoops them right out and eats it up. No one comes out of his training a person anymore.’
‘Shut up you di’kut you don’t know a damn thing.’
‘I’ve never met an emotion in my life. Haven’t ya heard?’)
“Good,” He sighs, takes a drink of water and winces as he cracks his back, “I’m headed down to mess, you coming with? Or you gonna go torment my Shinies again?”
Neyo snorts, and his smile comes back, just as sharp as ever, “Already said Hi to your Shinies, made some great first impressions, and I’m—”
His comm goes off and Neyo has perfected the art of rolling his eyes with his entire body.
He twitches and there’s a scowl lining the corners of his eyes, the lines of his face.
Bly snorts, “Medic?”
“Medic,” Neyo agrees, all disgust and narrows his eyes at his comm, disassembles it with practiced fingers and fishes a bit out that Bly recognizes as an audio bug.
He smothers his laughter with another drink of water.
The tension in the room hangs over them and he moves careful, “Well, in that case, let’s go, or all the pudding will be gone, the tail end of Besh shift always ends up with first pick and I made Jate mad enough he’ll definitely give my desert ration away.”
Neyo snorts and it’s a sort of victory, not quite soft hands and gentle arms, not the feeling of sweets on the tongue and laughter in the air. But it isn’t dead eyes and broken bones anymore, isn’t tears and blood and terror.
At some point maybe, when Cody calls them home, maybe Bly will get the chance to have more than two major memories of Neyo, more than the bits he remembers of childhood.
Maybe.
Later, Neyo steals his pudding and Bly glares, takes his bread with a huff and agrees to another spar sometime.
Neyo’s eyes glitter and Bly’s chest aches.