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No one was really sure if soulmates were chosen by the stars or souls themselves or just sort of grew through time between people’s own efforts. Mamē had claimed it was the stars, a gift that was scattered across your lifetime to ease the pain of life on Eos if you paid close enough attention to see them.
Da, just to tease her, said it was probably something about whatever made up souls, some sort of resonance in their substance. “Like music,” he would say, either blowing a raspberry in Nyx’s stomach or Mamē’s neck or pulling Papa into a dance while singing an old ballad Nyx had known by heart before he could remember learning it – Papa’s song, he’d called it before being scandalized to realize it existed outside the walls of their home and had a real name, that it hadn’t sprung from Da’s lips straight into Papa’s heart to tease him out of his stubbornness and moods.
Papa, true to form, took the third option, not because he doubted the stars – he believed in Fate and in the Astrals in a peculiar, quiet way that was solid as stone but just as opaque, as prickly to hold as pumice, in a way Nyx had never really understood and Mamē still couldn’t explain – but because he guarded his own space as fiercely as a mother coeurl. “Don’t bother wasting your energy trying to heal people who won’t appreciate your sacrifice, Nyx,” he would warn him. “Choose who you can risk the pain for, and then fight like flames to gorge yourself on it. That’s the way you grow a bond.”
At that point, Mamē or Da or both would come up behind him and start rubbing his shoulders, and Nyx and Selena – never wanting to be left out – would find their own place in the routine by either snuggling up next to Papa on the couch or trying to massage his hands or feet, complete with overly-exaggerated faces at how badly his feet “smelled”, despite him washing them religiously every time he came in the house. Selena had started it, and the way that Papa had laughed and laughed until the pain eased out of all of their parents eyes had only encouraged them, of course.
Nyx, ever his parents’ loyal child – even now, past the point where anyone was left who could see it to laugh at the similarities – personally thought it was probably some sort of combination of the three. Who knew what the stars were thinking, after all, and who had seen what a soul was made out of? But the people who matched didn’t make any sort of real sense except for how they did when it came down to it, and how did you explain soulmates who would never have met if not for Niflheim’s advance? And if all it took was willing it, there would probably be more people compatible with the King at least a little, and probably be more Kingsglaive.
Though maybe Nyx was the dense one, for jumping headfirst into the role. Maybe most people were smarter than that.
He jerked his thoughts away from the past and his head from the penlight, batting instinctively against the source of the stabbing pain. Tredd barked a laugh but shifted his grip, and Nyx took a moment to breathe as the pain from the light slipped away from him like mist off the lakes of Duscae in winter – or, well, what Nyx would classify as winter, anyway, even if that was broader than most of the locals liked to admit, but there had been a point to the metaphor, hadn’t there? – as the medic talked over him and Tredd snapped back.
Tredd had been a good choice to leave Nyx with, logically, even if Nyx didn’t really remember why he’d been put in his care this time. While all the Glaive were soulmates of moderate strength – because they were all soulmates of the King, which is how he was able to share his magic with them – Tredd and Nyx were better aligned than most, which meant he could share enough of Nyx’s pain to get him able to move if they really needed to. At the end of the day, though, there were other strong matches for Nyx among the Glaive, and Nyx didn’t get left with them nearly as often.
The real reason the sadistic asshole was usually put on Nyx-sitting duty was because he had found his own way to be lazy but efficient about it; he would take just enough pain to keep Nyx functional and off their precious stash of actual painkillers – a favor Nyx was more than willing to pay him back in kind when their situations were reversed – and not a drop more, which kept Nyx hurting enough to stay in his bed and bad tempered enough to fight back when Tredd teased him or things went wrong.
The Captain was also convinced it would be some sort of deterrent to Nyx against repeat offences, which was somewhat hilarious because it hadn’t worked yet; it’s not like Nyx planned to defy orders ahead of time, and he wasn’t actually the most injury-prone in the Glaive, thank you very much. But it honestly suited Nyx just fine; if he’d been “punished” already, there was less busy work and death-by-boredom waiting for him back at base.
But that was just a side-benefit. The reason Nyx never put up more than a token fight at being dumped on Tredd was because not being blind with Nyx’s pain kept Tredd functional enough to fight with the worse medics, which, by the sound of it, this one was.
And as much as Tredd liked to poke people – and especially Nyx – for reactions, or legitimately didn’t care if he crossed lines sometimes when he was on a roll, his greatest joy was being able to tear into someone who really deserved it. Nyx could put up with some needling for the security of knowing someone as persistent as Tredd had his back. At least in short doses.
Nyx let himself drift, trying to figure out just how bad it was this time. His face was throbbing, especially his right cheek, and his skull behind his ears was too, even with Tredd taking the edge off of it. His hands hadn’t hurt until he tried to move them, but once he did the pain shot all the way up his arms. Someone, presumably Tredd, pinched him to get him to stop, but Nyx needed to know how bad things were so he ignored him and kept checking. He left his arms alone this time and focused on the rest of his body, but thankfully, aside from a twinge in his problem knee that wasn’t really any worse than it usually was after a battle, it just felt like the normal aches and pains.
So it was probably something wrong with his head. Libertus, he bet, would tell them that was nothing new. Tredd would, too, probably.
Tredd nudged him again sometime later and Nyx remembered his arms were hurt just in time so that he didn’t actually hit Tredd back, but what movement he’d managed still made him hiss in pain, which set off his head again. Nyx aimed some of his curses Tredd’s way even their original cause wasn’t precisely his fault; Nyx could very well feel that Tredd was letting Nyx suffer through things on his own at this point.
He forced himself to relax, knowing tensing up would just make everything worse. Unfortunately, knowing and doing weren’t always the same.
Eventually he was able to get his head calm enough to try to open his eyes.
It looked like he was in one of the Glaive’s vans, stretched out on the floor. He could see boots walking and feel the vibration of the impact in the floor underneath him, but they didn’t seem to be moving anymore. He closed his eyes before he could get nauseous and tried to figure out where they were.
Nyx couldn’t hear the medic anymore, but wasn’t quite sure how long it had been since he’d been in their care – he’d been trying to drift below the pain and above the memories, and was pretty sure he’d managed some sort of doze in there, at least. But he couldn’t remember getting into the van. Had the medic seen him while he was here? Or had he imagined the whole thing because he was used to Tredd arguing? And what did that mean for how long they had travelled to get here? Had they even left yet?
“C’mon, pretty boy, up and at ‘em,” Tredd said. Nyx would kick him – he’d learned his lesson about moving his arms, at least, but he was far from helpless without them – but Tredd said it softly enough it wasn’t making his head hurt, and Nyx was trying to reward good behavior in hopes it would continue. Kicking was counterproductive for that, unfortunately.
He still made faces at Tredd as he coaxed Nyx upright and to the bench and thankfully let him rest there a moment. Nyx kept his eyes closed and leaned against Tredd.
“The good news,” Tredd continued, his gleeful tone contrasting the continued low volume, “is that they’re pretty sure you didn’t break your face, so you’ll still be able to distract the librarians for Crowe.” Nyx started to make faces again, and then they became less an expression of his opinion and more of actual pain as Tredd hauled him the rest of the way to standing. “The bad news is your brain took most of the impact and swelled to match the size of your head, so no warping for you for a while. But at least you lost all that empty space in there.”
Nyx was sure there was a clever comeback he should be making, but it was escaping him. He focused instead on staying on his feet, not moving his arms too much, and making his head shut the flames up. He leaned forward against Tredd, making sure to use his left side and not the right, which was feeling like it was trying to slide off his body, honestly.
He took back half of everything bad he’d said about Tredd when the ash-for-brains actually let him stay there and gather himself for a moment, the only price being listening to Tredd continue to insult him at low enough volume that Nyx didn’t even have to work to shut him out. The moment of rest helped a lot – probably way too much for it to have been an entirely unassisted moment, actually – and so Nyx did his best to pull some of his prickly asshole of a sometimes friend’s anxiety into himself in return.
It was only fair, and the mild adrenaline that the diluted trickle of borrowed emotion sparked in him might even be enough to keep Nyx moving, after all. Practical, that was Nyx’s middle name, no matter what Libertus or Drautos or Tredd said.
But peaceful moments couldn’t last, and soon Tredd started shuffling him forward again. Nyx kept his eyes closed and let himself be directed, focusing on keeping himself mostly upright and his stomach where it should be. He could do this.
Tredd steadied him a bit as he walked down the ramp. Or maybe more than a bit, but Nyx’s head was clearly compromised so he didn’t have to be fair in his assessments. The fact that they’d set up the ramp and not just made him hop down meant he probably looked as bad as he felt and had scared someone – maybe even Tredd, come to think of it – enough to argue for it, but Nyx didn’t have the energy to worry about other people just yet.
Libertus caught him at the bottom before he could trip over his own feet at the change in angles, and he hummed slightly as he tucked his less-painful cheek against his oldest friend’s neck. He’d know Libertus’s particular mix of aches and pains – mental and physical – anywhere, even blind like this, even stinking from the sweat and worse of the battlefield. Nyx and Libertus were only minor soulmates, especially given the perspective Nyx had now on the range of relative strength of bonds thanks to the Glaive, but back home it had been more than most, and so their parents had shoved them together every chance they’d gotten and they’d made the most of it, more or less. They’d resented and avoided each other, and trailed after and confided in each other and everything in between since Nyx had been born, pretty much, and that did as much for a soulmate bond than whatever compatibility they naturally had. They were both too stubborn for it to work any other way, honestly.
“Easy, Nyx, I got you,” Libertus murmured. There was a rough burr in his voice that normally Nyx would be worried about but was too much for Tired Nyx Brain to try to figure out just yet.
Thankfully his head was starting to clear, and if the exhaustion was still there, the lack of pain was doing wonders for his thinking process.
The two were probably related, he belatedly realized as his brain started to come back online. That particular tone of voice usually meant Libertus was half-asleep or in pain, and the most likely cause was the pain Libertus was siphoning away from Nyx, which is what was letting him think clearly enough to identify it. Nyx should probably pull away, break the connection so that tone would disappear, but he trusted Libertus to know his limits. He would be fine.
Nyx would kick his ass later if he wasn’t.
Libertus cursed hoarsely, but his hand was still gentle as he squeezed the back of Nyx’s neck in just the right way to help ease some more of their now shared headache, helping them both. “What the Depths did you do, hero?” he demanded, pain and grumpiness not concealing much of his worry at all.
Nyx just hummed as he did his best to melt into Libertus’s bulk. Libertus didn’t really expect an answer from him, anyway.
“Tried to catch one of those giant MT swords with his face,” Tredd sneered from somewhere behind him, puncturing the statement with a slam of the van doors. Nyx jumped slightly at the sudden noise, then tried to make himself relax again. He had to break the pain cycle, that’s what Mamē always told Selena. He had to relax. For Libertus as much as himself, now.
“But this is Nyx and he has almost as much luck as stupidity, so he got his arms up in time to take some of the force,” Tredd continued, his voice softer even though Nyx was pretty sure he was closer. “Medic didn’t think he broke anything, but we’re gonna check to be sure.”
“‘S head’s too hard to break easily,” Libertus agreed far too quickly, but he was taking enough of his pain that Nyx wasn’t willing to pull away enough to kick him. Nobody would have talked to him for a full week back home if he had been rude enough to hit someone who was taking his pain, and it was bad sense anyway.
“Yeah, I’m much more worried about the arms,” Tredd agreed, but he slipped his arm around Nyx’s waist and latched on to the skin by his hip there, and between the two of them they balanced Nyx’s pain enough that he felt mostly human again. It was probably the closest thing Nyx would get to an apology for the van doors, and he appreciated it, even if he wouldn’t ever say it out loud.
The clump of the three of them shuffled together toward the double doors, Libertus and Tredd doing their best to guide Nyx’s steps and maintain the skin-to-skin contact required to keep sharing Nyx’s pain. Nyx cracked a smile trying to imagine how awkward they must look, suppressing the chuckles that were trying to bubble up as they sort of lurched through the door.
Laughing probably wasn’t the most sane reaction to nearly being dropped on his possible broken face, but Nyx figured a big part of it was likely the euphoria from the abrupt drop in his pain levels with two people helping him; it was always nicer to share pain among a group rather than two. It wasn’t a precise math thing, sharing pain, but some of it always seemed to slip through the cracks when it was passed around multiple soulmates. And he felt less guilty when his friends were taking smaller shares of his pain.
All of that meant Nyx was together enough to repay them by sipping a little of Libertus’s guilt and a little more Tredd’s anxiety. Emotional pain took more concentration to pull than physical pain did, and the transfer wasn’t quite as clean, so you couldn’t take on as much, but Nyx was pretty good at it, so he could take the edge off for them even with his right cheek still throbbing and half his concentration focused on staying on his feet and moving forward. It was pretty impressive, if he said so himself, but he didn’t because it would ruin the favor. Anyway, it was the least he could do.
The Captain liked to say that him taking the emotional edges off anyone who helped take some his pain was the only reason people were so willing to put up with him and his stunts, which was probably right, but, well, at least it worked, so Nyx saw no reason to stop. In fact, it was probably a good reason to keep doing it, right?
Even with both of them helping share the pain, it wasn’t nothing, though, and that plus the non-pain-related portions of his injuries — the blood loss, the dizziness, the mental fog, etc — kept Nyx woozy enough that it was a surprise when they pushed sideways through the doors to one of the private rooms rather than triage or a larger ward. Maybe they had called ahead? The person who stood up as they came in wasn’t in scrubs or a white coat, though, so maybe they’d just gotten the wrong room. Nyx tried to apologize and glare at Libertus at the same time, but both actions were cut off as his fellow glaives spun him around and lifted into the bed.
Tredd was smirking at him, so of course Nyx had to glare back at him. That was the only reason he jumped when arms wrapped around his waist, of course. Before he could do more than that, though, Nyx almost immediately collapsed back against the bed’s occupant as most of his pain sapped out of him through that point of contact.
The speed of the transfer and the amount that he lost could only mean one person, so Nyx craned his head back with the euphoric smile of someone aware of just how sweet being pain-free was. “Hi,” he chirped, feeling almost drunk on the feeling.
“Hi,” Cor Leonis said, face flat but Nyx was certain his eyes were sparkling. “You look horrible.”
“Thanks,” Nyx said, settling back further against his boyfriend.
“Thank you,” Cor said, but he was looking away from Nyx. He pouted up at Cor. Nyx was the one hurt, Cor should pay attention to him. “He can be a handful,” Cor continued, ignoring Nyx in favor of Libertus and Tredd.
“We leave him in your hands,” Libertus said dryly, cutting off whatever Tredd had been about to say.
Cor nodded at them solemnly, still ignoring Nyx until the others were gone. Then he carefully leaned his head against Nyx’s. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
“Gotta get your attention somehow.”
“I promise, there are better ways.”
“It’s worked so far.”
Cor snorted. “We can work on your plans when half your face isn’t torn up.”
“My plans are great,” Nyx said, turning further into Cor’s neck. “And so are you.”
Cor huffed a sigh. “We will talk about this later.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Nyx knew that the nurses and doctors and tests were likely coming, and he'd have to be involved with that, but for now he was safe and warm and almost pain-free, and the combination was too potent to resist. He let go of the last bit of tension and slipped back into sleep.