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Cor knew they’d planned on using his confrontation with the Bladesmaster to make him well-known enough that he could stand by Regis’s side even without the formal title. He knew that would involve time in the spotlight, and people talking about him, gossiping and making up stories like they did for Regis, if not quite to the same degree. He hadn’t expected it to involve people talking to him. And he hadn’t expected people paying attention to Fides.
Cor hadn’t realized people had paid enough attention to him to notice his daemon, at least people outside the Citadel, anyway. He was attached enough to Regis and his retinue, and before that Mors, that he knew that people inside the Citadel likely recognized him. And Clarus had filed the paperwork to register Fides’ settled form and have her picture taken for their file almost as soon as they’d gotten back, so what had happened was officially on the books. It was fairly important paperwork, not only so that imposters could be more easily spotted but also to register Cor officially as an adult. So he’d expected people there either notice or get the notifications and realize she’d settled.
But apparently Cor had been spotted enough times on guard duty or driving for Regis or the King or even occasionally for Clarus that people outside the Citadel had noticed him and speculated about him and had definitely marked that he appeared to have a settled hound daemon. So when they’d shown up in the spotlight with names and a shocking story, people started crawling out of the woodwork saying they’d known him or studied him or whatever, and apparently having a small cat at his side — or more often hidden in the shadows, keeping watch — caused quite a stir, almost even more than them fighting the Bladesmaster.
The first person to mention it had been one of the gas attendants at a station he’d hit on his way to the Tempering Grounds, who was working again when they'd stopped in on their return trip. She'd torn her attention away from the Crown Prince long enough to gape at him and Fides for a full six seconds and then ask, “Didn’t you have a hound before?”
“She settled,” he’d said, still exhausted and a bit startled by a question about what should have been such an obvious answer.
“But she was so steady before! I guess you just have a pretty strong will, huh?” the attendant had said, plastering on a customer service smile. She’d seem pretty shaken, though. He’d thought then that she maybe had trauma around settling or something, or Fides as a hound had reminded her of someone she’d liked.
In hindsight, he had been far too kind. Apparently being spared (somewhat) by a sadistic asshole had made him feel overly charitable toward other idiots like him.
“I work for the crown,” was all he’d said to her at the time. Regis had taken it as a cue to talk him up and start their rumor campaign, and the embarrassment that stirred up and the focus it had taken for Cor not to show that embarrassment had taken all of Cor’s attention after that.
There had been a few more odd mutterings around the barracks and Citadel when they returned, but most of them had been making fun of how cute and small Fides was, and had ended with her ambushing the offender’s daemon or Cor punching someone in the throat if there were too many assholes for her to take care of them all herself. There were a few that had had a different tone to them, but Cor had glared the assholes down and Fides had gotten great at sneaking around and appearing out of the shadows just in the right place to completely terrify the idiots.
The first time someone directly mentioned the swirling rumors to his face had been in the second interview Regis had arranged for him, part of the campaign Regis and Clarus were trying to wage. Officially, it was a joint interview to discourage people from trying to test themselves on the proving ground, with Cor as the eyewitness to the number of dead and to what exactly was being tested - and that Shields of the king, of the line of the Shields were the only ones who stood a chance.
Cor had been iffy about it from the start. “And when they ask me why I survived? Saying it was because I was young or loyal or whatever other reason and he took pity on me isn’t going to help your propaganda,” he'd warned them. It was only half trying to get out of the whole thing. He was also honestly trying to preserve the progress they’d made. Admitting his weakness and showing how young he was just going to hurt their chances. If he was mysterious and withdrawn instead, people would fill in their own images of strength and build on it. That’s how rumors thrived, after all, in the darkness and lack of information. He and Fides had laughed at enough of them during their time in the army to know that much.
“Say you don’t know,” Regis had shrugged. It was true enough, and simple enough to be believable, even if it didn't seem smart. But this was Regis's battlefield, Cor had told himself, and he supposed he should trust him there. “We’ll cover the rest, hint at what he must have seen in you to impress him despite your lack of the proper bloodline."
The eyebrow wiggling on the last bit would have earned Regis a kick in the shin if they were outside Insomnia, but unfortunately there had been witnesses around. So Cor had smothered the face he wanted to make at that mouthful of sparks and figured being able to restrain himself that well was a sign that maybe he was actually an adult after pretending to be one for so long.
That part of the interview had actually gone pretty well, surprisingly enough. Maybe Regis or his people — and it was so weird still that Regis had “people” here, even if Cor was pretty sure he’d inherited half of them from Wesk — had set up the questions ahead of time or something, but it had gone pretty much like Regis had said it would, and Cor just said what he’d prepared when he was supposed to say it.
That really should have been his first clue. There was no way the pillars of the earth could support a world in which things went Cor’s way so smoothly.
“And your daemon, Lieutenant?” the host had asked, eyes narrowed in faked concern. Cor had to take a moment to smother his scowl, caught between exasperation at why everyone seemed obsessed with that question and discomfort at the rank he’d apparently earned for surviving, according to some dusty old reg one of Regis’s people had found. Cor wouldn’t have been surprised if there was some creativity in the “finding”, either. “What happened to her?”
The direct question at least gave him something to focus on, even if it was stupid. At least Cor hoped it was just stupid and not a trap he couldn’t see, but Clarus wasn’t giving him any signals this time, so he turned toward the man and gave him a flat look.
“She settled.”
The host looked a little uncomfortable. Good.
“Yes, but, she had already been settled, right?” Before Cor could supply his next line in the now overly-familiar script, the host continued, “So does that mean the Blademaster can alter your daemon’s form?!”
Cor was so confused he couldn’t find the words to answer. Thankfully, he wasn’t alone in this interview, and Clarus picked up the dropped baton before Cor could even gather himself enough to ask for help.
“That’s not in any of the lore we’ve seen. And of course all we found with any of the other bodies was Dust,” he said, emphasizing the bodies part.
“And the spirits didn’t have daemons, but they shone gold,” Cor finally marshaled himself enough to add.
“Ah,” the host said, eyes shining with the light of an epiphany, as their moth daemon fluttered around and hovered on the other side of Cor, as if taking his measure. “Then if it wasn’t Gilgamesh,”—Cor winced. A name made the Blademaster far too human, which he very much no longer was—“it must have been you.”
“Yes, she settled,” Cor said firmly, not sure what their issue was but wanting the conversation back on solid ground. “She’s a black-footed cat, it’s a wild cat from the border of Leide and Duscae, not a housecat.”
The host nodded along eagerly, still looking fascinated and so Cor let his usual spiel spill from his lips and eat up the remaining time.
The trickle of questions became a tumult after that. Everyone seemed convinced Fi had changed forms because of his dramatic or traumatic fight — no one seemed to agree which it was, and it’s not like it wasn’t both — and wanted to ask about it, see how he survived, gawk at them, or try to figure out how they could change their own daemon’s forms.
In the quiet moments where Cor had time to think, he felt kind of sorry for the daemons involved in the last category, but that wasn’t very often. Everywhere he went people either wanted to ask about the Tempering Ground or Fides, and he absolutely was not going to talk about either — the first to dangerous, and the second too personal.
Cor tried to fulfill his duties despite it. Aside from Regis and Clarus's plots, there were still his regular responsibilities and tasks as a member of the Crownsguard, even if what his exact position was at the moment was in an odd limbo, which both of them agreed was a good thing. He even was trying to fulfill his familial responsibilities, to the larger gens if not his immediate family.
'Trying' being, as was becoming more and more common, the best description of what he'd done. Apparently the attention surrounding him had gotten to the point that even the gens told him to stay away at the next weekly meeting he showed up for. At least that was the excuse they’d given. The eldest members of the gens, their daemons lined up before them in a wall as firm as their faces, solemnly explained that it was a shame, but they wanted to have an actual, productive meeting. Cor hadn’t been able to ask what exactly that had meant, half out of ingrained habit, and half because he couldn’t find the words for everything boiling up behind his jaw. Fides, who normally could say what he couldn't, just shuffled closer to his leg, almost hiding behind it, practically screaming their unease, which made his gut curl on top of everything else.
Cor didn’t have much contact with his parents, even since he’d been back in the city more after he’d limped back from Accordo, trailing after Regis more on inertia than any particular plan. His parents felt like they’d done their duty, and he was a productive member of the city, and specifically the King’s service, someone they could boast about but who didn’t need their help anymore. They’d already adapted to life without him. Cor wondered sometimes if that had brought the pair of them closer together or even further apart, but he didn't care enough to actually find out. He thought about it more like running your tongue over the spot where you'd lost a tooth -- half out of habit, half checking to see if it still hurt -- than actual care. At least that's what he’d told Clarus when he’d offered to send updates home for his parents, and Fi hadn't disagreed, so it was probably true.
Fides did say that Cor probably hadn’t helped things by moving into the barracks when he'd first returned from the front lines, but even she didn’t really regret either the move or its consequences. It just kind of felt inevitable. It was certainly quieter there, even if he’d had to learn a lot of things fast. Thankfully the barracks still had laundry service, maintenance, and the mess hall, so he just had to pick up odd things like what things you absolutely had to go out of the Citadel to find decent versions of (socks, surprisingly), when and what maintenance would fix, and when the drunks and the office workers spewed out into the streets just outside the Citadel walls.
But even if they’d moved on from his parents’ house, they’d both always figured they would still remain connected to the gens. Plenty of people moved out or fell out with individuals, but the family remained. That was the point of the gens. He and Fi hadn’t ever figured they would always be super involved, but after all the chaos that followed the interview, they’d been kind of looking forward to this meeting, at least. To a little bit of normal life - to just be able to practice sparring and dodging the younger kids while Fi hovered around the adult’s daemons and listened to the gossip so they knew who and what to avoid, just like they always did. And maybe she could hang out with them openly now, because they were officially of age, now. They could have that ceremony to move up to the adult tables, and something good could come out of this whole firestorm around settling.
In the chaos surrounding the public side of things, he’d forgotten, somehow, that he’d lost his mater’s sword.
The Genji blade. The gens’ blade.
He’d literally lost their pride, their history, and had left it to rot in darkness with the Bladesmaster, just one lost blade among many. The first meeting after he'd returned, right after he’d finished giving his report to the king – Regis and Clarus had both been terribly busy, but one of the older Crownsguard sergeants had looked his draft over for him and helped him tighten it up and put a better foot forward, one that supported what Regis and Clarus were trying to do – had felt like moving from the frying pan into the fire as he stumbled for the words to justify what had happened. He had almost been afraid they were going to kick him and Fi out then and there, but they’d also come from reporting to the king with an official recommendation from Mors himself to hang among the gens’ awards, and in the end the gens had wanted that too much to actually follow through with removing him from the rolls.
His uncle had flat out told him as much after the meeting, even if Fides hadn’t been able to figure it out.
Cor had thought that had been the end of it, decision made. Maybe some resentment would linger -- hopefully enough to keep the questions off his back here if nowhere else -- but people would move on to the next hot topic. But apparently the sentiment hadn’t gone away, and so they’d taken the first chance they could get to tell him to just not come by for the next few months.
For the good of the gens, of course. Nothing personal. Nothing officially rejecting him, but Cor knew exactly what that expression, copied with only minor variations across the bulwark of his relations’ faces and their daemon’s postures, had really meant.
So they’d left.
True to form, as soon as they’d hit the larger street, someone had called out, “Hey, aren’t you—” as if to taunt them that the gens had been justified, actually, in kicking them out via the coward’s way, and Cor couldn’t take it anymore. He’d scooped Fi up and bolted, using all the old shortcuts he remembered from playing tag with the cousins to book it to the train station. It was Bamutsday morning and most people were training in some way, at least in an old neighborhood like this one, and the rest were sleeping in, so as long as he stayed off the main roads they shouldn’t run into too much traffic.
It got him to the station, at least, and he huddled in back corner of the nastiest-looking car all the way back to the Citadel walls, where he was used to dodging reporters and the nosy, at least. After he slipped off the train, he headed north rather than through the gates, where Regis and Clarus could see that he and Fi had come back early if they bothered to check the books. He didn’t remember that they were too busy to check on him like that anymore until he was a block away, but he’d already committed himself to his new plan by then, and all it did was add to the dark mess inside his chest that was writhing like Levithan in a storm.
Just north of the inner walls there was parkway that had been made from the old moat and barbican – now some sort of royal museum he’d never been inside. There were plenty of people taking advantage of the sunshine and the fact that the park didn’t close like most places did while everyone trained on Bamutsday, and with his head ducked down, his shoulders hunched like he was an actual kid, and Fi wrapped up in his jacket he was able to blend in with them just long enough to get to the massive old oak just to the right of the public toilets. There were a bunch of trees that were about the same size in the park, but this one had been trimmed so severely that the branches were too high for most people to bother with, and the proximity to the toilets kept most people away who’d use it for hammocks or the like.
But Cor had always been a fan of working smarter and harder.
Without a word between them, Fi jumped into his hands, and he tossed her onto the roof and scrambled up the dumpster to join her, and then tossed her onto the tree itself. Usually she’d transform into a bird for this part, but thankfully her new form was a pretty good climber. Cor felt a small jolt of fear at the realization that she couldn’t just transform anymore if she got stuck, and he’d have to try and get to her somehow, or get someone to help, and just the thought of talking to someone at the moment nearly made him want to scream.
The aimless anxiety and urge to fight, run, do something to escape the pit draining from behind his stomach to the Draconian’s void, sucking all of his ability to think or focus with it, was mercifully interrupted by Fides tossing down the rope at last, and so Cor lost himself in the effort of climbing it instead, of hauling up the rope behind him and tying it off with the habit of a dozen trips just like this. Then he flopped forward, hugging the massive branch below him, bit his sleeve and screamed.
It wasn’t fair. He’d lost. He didn’t deserve this attention. He didn’t deserve to be harassed like this, either. Fides wasn’t a freak, and neither was he, and Regis said this was helping but he hadn’t actually talked to him or Clarus in over a week and the wounds he’d gotten in the Tempering Ground were still aching, especially when he was cold, and it felt cold all the time now, and he should be better than this, he should be smarter than this, but all he wanted was to curl up in a corner somewhere and not have anyone even notice him for like a week, and not to have anyone notice he was gone either.
“I heard someone say that the oaks here were planted in honor of the New Wall going up,” Fi said, cutting into his spiraling thoughts. “They’re certainly big enough for it.”
“I know, Fi,” he gritted out after he managed to unclench his jaws enough to spit his sleeve out. “I was there, too.”
“I wonder how many they planted, and how many survived. And if the roots mess anything up now that they’re so big.”
“I don’t care,” he said, louder, pushing himself up slightly.
“Well, it’s better than whatever you were doing over there. It certainly wasn’t helping any—”
“Shut up, Fides, and leave me alone!” he yelled. “This is all your fault, anyway. If you weren’t so obvious, if we didn’t have to try so hard to make sure no one saw you go too far away, none of this would be happening!” It wasn’t true, and he knew it wasn’t true, but it certainly hadn’t helped anything. “Why can’t you just be normal? Why did he have to change you?”
There was a moment of silence that cut more than anything she could have yelled back. Cor breathed in deep, ready to yell again just to fill it. This was her fault, not his. If she could just have held on a little longer, not settled right at the worst moment—
“I tried,” she finally said, quietly, fragile somehow. “I tried to be strong, to keep going, but you were shutting down. You were scaring me. It felt like I was going to just…drift away on the breeze. So I had to ask. I had to make you choose.
“I’m not sorry,” she added after a moment, and he couldn’t tell if that was true or not, so caught up in that yawning chasm of failure all over again.
“I’d do it again, if it meant saving you,” she said more strongly. “I’m not going to let you slip away, Cor Leonis. Not before your time.”
“And when is that?” his mouth asked without his input. The whole inside of him, brain and heart and guts just felt hollow.
There was a sharp pricking on the back of his legs, then up along his back. “Ow!” he hissed, arching away, as Fi’s claws went especially deep.
“When you really have nothing left to give,” she snarled back, unrepentant, and rode out his squirming until she could leap over his head and crouch down to glare him down. “When there really isn’t anyone left you can help, and it’s not just you giving up early.”
“I’m not—”
“You were!” she hissed, ears flat. “You were giving up, and I know why! Of course I know why! But what they say doesn’t matter. I don’t care. You wouldn’t care if you took a moment to actually think about yourself instead of running away!”
“There’s nothing to do, Fi!” he said, pushing himself up until he was sitting, giving himself some distance. “All I can do is wait and bite my tongue and not mess up whatever the Plan is! The Plan they won’t actually tell me anything about!”
“Then ask them! Make time! Fight,” Fi shot back, her head raising enough to keep eye contact but her body still crouched like she was about to pounce. “Leave the politics to them and show off why you got farther than anyone else, and why you’ve earned your place in the retinue. Spar, plan, teach, just do something! We weren’t made for this,” she pleaded.
“We weren’t…” he agreed, slowly, mind whirring as he tried to figure out what they could do instead. Before he could think of much more, his pager went off, obnoxiously loud.
“What now,” he grumbled, but without much effort to disguise how pleased he was. Who was going to judge him, Fi? She was just as excited as he was with the possibility of progress. “Regis,” he informed her. “He wants us to meet them in the usual meeting room.”
“Good timing,” she observed smugly, her feline mouth curving threateningly as she smiled. Cor liked it. He knew what she was feeling, and so would anyone who paid enough attention, but anything to scare off the ignorant was a plus. Her hound form hadn’t looked nearly as dangerous when she was happy, for all that she’d been about five times her current size. It was a nice balance to her otherwise cute package.
“I just hope it’s nothing stupid,” he said, just to be contrary.
“Oh, it will be. But it will get us a little closer to what we want,” Fi said airily as she darted around him to untie the rope. “And in the meantime, you can figure out how to tie this again when I’m not a bird. Cats don’t climb down very well.”
“Sounds like a you problem,” he said with a tiny smile. “Do something about it.”
“I’m going to spill your guts on the sand.”
“Will not! You love me!” he called up as he started climbing back down, his smile growing as he went, despite the rocking as Fides jumped down on his shoulder.
“Someone has to!” she howled in his ear, latching on tightly with all her claws and he just laughed. He wasn’t sure what they were going to do next, but it sure would be something. Fides would make sure of it.