Chapter Text
Cor does not know which of the Six he’d pissed off, but it must have been more than one. Maybe all of them.
The day had been a train wreck. Four different briefings, back to back to fucking back, followed immediately by an emergency escort detail. Apparently, Regis decided he absolutely needed to be the one to see the proposed plot for the Queen Aulea—may she rest in peace—Memorial park. Or garden. Or endangered species aviary refuge. Regis had not decided which of those the land would actually be used for, and neither Cor nor Clarus wanted to be the one to point out to their grieving friend that he could simply have all three. Primarily because it would likely lead to more meetings and plot viewings and discussions about ribbon cuttings and…
By the time Cor had gotten back to his office and had a moment to breathe, his phone had eight missed calls and fourteen furious texts from Aeolus.
Aeolus
Pick up your fucking phone, Cor
Why am I on the daycare emergency call list?
I never agreed to watch your kid
Seriously man, what the hell
Ah, you’re on the detail
Come get your kid when you’re back
Bahamut’s balls, how do you get her to stop screaming?
Cor
Cor
You cannot complain about my work for another month, this is agony
I hate your daughter and I hate you
My gods, the lungs on this thing
She’s asleep
I want overtime
It took seven minutes to get to the bullpen from his office, so Cor ran and made it in four.
The employees closest to the entrance watched in horror as he stormed into the room, visibly flinching as the doors slammed shut behind him. It was still rather busy this late at night, the overhead lights on at full brightness and more than a few people loitering around the walkway, but Cor only had eyes for the lower floor.
The recessed bullpen was crowded with office personnel and uniformed Crownsguard alike, all moving with varying amounts of urgency as they hurried to and fro. The bulk of the crowd hovered around Aeolus’ cubical on the far side of the recessed floor. A thick throng of employees who were clearly not working, tittering at one another as they stared at whatever was occurring beyond the cubicle wall.
Cor jumped the railing rather than take the stairs, pointedly not-running his way down the aisle. The conversation became clearer as he got closer, though it was still hard to distinguish who was speaking.
“Look at her. She is so cute, Aeo. Why are you complaining?”
“She’s cute now, but if I move even a millimeter, she screams,” Aeolus’ voice carried from the other side of the crowd. “I’m not kidding when I say I’m making the Marshal pay me overtime for this. It’s been horrible. She’s a daemon.”
“It’s just a baby, Aeo. How bad can she be?”
“Awful,” some thick-neck said, leaning over from the neighboring cubicle to look down at Aeolus. Cor could barely make out the line of his fatigues as he stalked closer. “It’s been screaming all night.”
“Seriously, how is she sleeping like that?” a scrawny woman in a grey pantsuit laughed, the lanyard around her neck loudly declaring her a visitor from one of the other floors. Domestic planning, if Cor had to guess, based on the sheer amount of paperwork in her arms.
“I have no fucking clue, but someone should take a photo. The fuck does the Marshal do, make it sleep on a towel rack?” The thick-neck quipped.
“Take any photos and your career will be short.” Cor said, bringing his shoulders back and positioning himself at the very edge of the cluster of people with his arms crossed. His fingers itched to summon his sword.
All eyes snapped to him. Wide-eyed. Terrified. The woman from domestics nearly dropped her papers as she jumped away from the edge of the cubicle. The crowd parted immediately, the smarter members of it swiftly dispersing with their eyes diverted away from him.
“Fucking finally,” Aeolus said, tilting sideways in his chair to peer around the divider. “Take your kid, Cor. You don’t pay me enough for this.”
The gods damned balls on this kid.
Cor stalked over, staring down at the thick-necked man who stood frozen in fear. Gallager, if Cor remembered correctly. Or Gill. Decent at hand-to-hand and marksmanship, awful with blades and logistics. Destined to be a pencil-pusher and a patrolman.
Or fired, if he stood there gaping at Cor much longer.
“You want something, private?”
Thick-neck disappeared behind the divider with a squeaked “No, Marshal.”
“Lay off Ginter, Cor. He’s been helping me deal with your brat’s screaming for the better part of the night.”
Aeolus was leaning back in his office chair, red-soles kicked up on his desk like a punk in detention. Draped lengthwise across his lap was Rosea, thumb firmly nestled in her mouth, the skin around her eyes puffy from prolonged crying, and a single leg dangling towards the floor. She did look a bit like a towel thrown across a rack to dry. An exhausted towel, whose cheeks were flushed and hair matted down with sweat. Cor’s heart seized.
“Why do you have her?”
“Fuck if I know. Daycare called me ‘round 18:00. Something about not being able to get in touch with you or anyone else. Apparently, I was the last one on the list. Kid’s sick.”
Cor glared at him.
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Here,” he pointed to a couple of stapled papers by his boot. “They gave me that to give to you. Something about them not taking her back ‘til she’s better. Oh, and her bag’s on the floor there.”
Cor snatched the papers off of the desk, skimming the header like it personally offended him. ‘Ear Infections in Toddlers.’ Gods damn it. Gods fucking damn it.
“Mind taking her now? My legs went numb an hour ago. As much as I love overtime, I’ve got plans with Tal tonight and I’m already late. You know how he gets.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Cor muttered, placing the papers back down on the desk.
He carefully slipped a hand between her stomach and Aeolus’ leg before Rosea shifted in her sleep. From the corner of his eyes, he could see Aeolus tense as if it were a bomb defusal. Cor couldn’t blame him. The past few months of spontaneous parenting had been a learning experience for Cor, and one thing he learned was that you never wanted to be the one to wake a baby. Ever.
Apparently, Aeolus had learned that lesson as well.
Cor froze until she let out a sigh, her tiny body deflating and her thumb slipping from her mouth to clutch loosely at his sleeve. He continued to slowly peel her away from Aeo’s legs, supporting her head in one hand as he scooped up the rest of her with the other. There was some awkward shuffling before he could rearrange her into anything approaching a proper hold, occasionally freezing mid-motion when she fidgeted against the handling, but she stayed blissfully asleep.
Which, of course, could not last.
Rosea stirred as Cor finally settled her against his shoulder. His blood ran cold as a single blue eye squinted at him, glaring at him for having the audacity to disturb her sleep. Cor immediately started rocking her, murmuring desperate pleas of ‘oh, Astrals, no please go back to sleep, Ro, shhh, shhh, please I’m begging you’ into her damp hair until she was appeased. Rosea yawned widely, letting her lid droop closed again before snuggling her face deeper into his chest with a content burble. It couldn’t have been comfortable, her face pressed directly into the patches that decorated his fatigues, but she didn’t seem to care.
For that, Cor was intensely grateful.
“My god, you’re a fucking baby-whisperer,” Aeolus whispered, sounding both disgusted and in awe. “Every time I so much as twitched, she screamed.”
Aeolus was looking at him as if he had plucked the moon from the sky and then sneezed on it, some mixture of horrified respect playing on his face as he stretched. He pulled legs down from the desk and furiously attempted to rub feeling back into them as he continued to complain.
“Seriously, why am I on the call list? I told you I’m not taking any responsibility for her. This is your thing, not mine.”
Because, despite his awful attitude, Aeolus was the only member of the Crownsguard with a permanent station in Insomnia that Cor trusted within ten feet of her. Because he was the only one still alive from that rescue mission, who knew how terrible it had been, and therefore the only one he knew would never hand her over to the council even if pressed.
“Because you run your mouth so damn much,” Cor deadpanned.
Aeolus read between the lines the way he always did, a shit-eating grin growing on his face. Cor wanted to kick his teeth in. He settled for crouching down to grab Rosea’s diaper bag off the ground, careful not to disturb her as he slung it over the opposite shoulder. He plucked the papers off of Aeolus’ desk and shoved them into one of the side pockets, not caring if they crumpled.
“Next time you make a spectacle of my daughter,” Cor threatened, staring Aeolus down as the younger man continued to rub at his legs. “I will make sure you’re stationed out in the ass end of Leide for the rest of your career.”
His head shot up, brown eyes wide as he gaped at Cor.
“Oh, no. No, no. No! There is no next time, Cor. I love your awful face, but keep your daemon spawn away from me.”
“Leide, Aeo,” he called over his shoulder as he stalked his way out of the bullpen.
“Take me off that list, Cor!”
Cor wasn’t taking him off the damn list.
“Aw, poor darling,” Regis cooed at her from behind his desk.
Cor had made a beeline to Regis’ office the second he had finished reading over the pamphlet from the daycare, twice. The first time, the information had leaked right out of his ears and onto the floor at the words ‘cannot return to the facilities until cleared by a Citadel pediatrician.’ He read that line four times before he allowed himself to believe it was real.
Where in the fuck was he supposed to find a babysitter? He couldn’t hire one, not without extensively vetting them and receiving approval from the Crown and Council. Monica was on deploy, as was Dustin alongside her. The only reason Cor wasn’t out there with them was the toddler sleeping in his arms.
Fuck it all.
“I need time off,” Cor said the second he burst into the King’s office.
Clarus and Regis had looked at him like he had grown a second head. He explained about the ear infection, punctuated by Rosea suddenly waking from where she had been dozing in his arms to wail at the top of her lungs. It had taken all three men several minutes of panicked consoling for her to quiet down again, their collective parenting skills still not quite up to par for a distressed Rosea. She ended up draped listlessly over Clarus’ shoulder, hiccuping and making disgruntled sounds as she pressed her face into the cold metal pauldrons. Perhaps Cor ought to have been more worried about where his daughter was willing to settle, but at the moment he was just happy she settled at all.
“Well, of course the daycare won’t take her. Ear infections aren’t contagious, but they’re usually caused by colds or the flu,” Clarus deadpans, still gently rocking side to side to keep her calm. “Has she had any symptoms?”
Cor rubbed at the growing headache between his eyes. “No, she was just fussy this morning. Wouldn’t eat her food and fought getting dressed. Thought she was just having a bad morning.”
“I’d say she was having a bad morning,” Regis said, unhelpfully. “Weren’t you, sweetheart?”
Rosea hiccuped. Clarus patted her gently on the back and was rewarded with an odd burble of contentment.
“I need to take time off to deal with this, Regis.”
Regis sighed, “I’m not sure that’s possible, Cor. I can give you a few hours in the morning for a doctor’s appointment, but there is far too much going on with this inquisition for us to spare you. You know that.”
Cor did. He was the one leading the charge against Niflheim this time, after all.
“Is it possible for Poppy to watch her, then?”
Clarus shook his head. “She’s with her mother for the week. Took Gladiolus with her so he could spend time with his grandparents. I’d lend you Jared, but I gave him time-off.”
“So what do I do?” Cor was losing patience.
“Have you considered simply keeping her with you? You would not be the first employee to take their child with them to work in a pinch,” Regis said, as if it were a reasonable suggestion and not completely insane.
“You want me to keep a toddler with me while I work?”
“It would hardly be unlike any other trainee you've had to babysit," Regis smiled indulgently. "As it is, it's not as if she could betray any state secrets. How many words is she up to now?"
"Five. 'Hi', 'Bye', 'Dad', 'Kitty', and-"
"Noooo," Rosea moaned into Clarus' shoulder, as if to prove Cor's point. The Shield immediately returned to rocking.
Regis smiled.
Regis was not smiling the next day as Cor sat across from him at his desk, Rosea limp and grumpy in his lap as they shifted through classified documents.
Evidently, as the Citadel pediatrics had told him in the morning, there was a rash of the common cold going around the main building. Likely, it had been one of the cleaning staff ignoring health protocol, given that most of the daycare had come down with it, as well as most of the taxation department, large swaths of the household staff, and Prince Noctis himself. Given that the two had never been allowed to play with one another, Regis could not actually blame his son’s sniffles on Cor’s grumpy toddler, but you would have been hard pressed to convince the King otherwise in that moment.
Granted, Rosea was accidentally making a pretty good go of it.
“Hi,” she muttered, for the third time that hour.
“Hello, Rosea,” Regis said without looking up from the paper he was frowning at.
“Hi,” she said while opening and closing her hand in what passed as a wave these days. “Hi Kitty.”
Cor smirked at the portfolio in his hand, skimming the topmost sheet before setting it aside. “That’s Regis, Rosea. You know him. Can you say ‘Regis’?”
Rosea tilted backwards in Cor’s lap to look up at him, almost overbalancing in the process. He settled her against his abdomen, where she collapsed with a huff. Her face was flushed, as it had been all day, and she made no attempt to do more than bonelessly stare up at him.
“Da.”
“No, I’m Dad. That’s Regis.”
“Da.”
“Re-gis.”
“Cor,” Regis sighed, “can we please focus on the task at hand? None of these reports are enough to justify the operations we have been doing in enemy territory. If we persist for much longer without giving the Council good reason to continue their blind support, I fear we may lose it quickly.”
“Kitty, no.”
“I still think waiting on the report from Uletham would be the best course of action,” Cor sighed. “Our internal agents—”
“Have betrayed us before,” Regis cut in. “As you well know.”
They both look down at Rosea, who had dozed against Cor with her neck bent at an odd angle. She protested half-heartedly as he adjusted her to lie more comfortably in his lap. He settled his hand on her cheek, which was far warmer than he would have liked it to be.
“Our internal agents,” Cor continued, “have indicated that they have found something big. Something that could very well cripple any goodwill Niflheim still has with Accordo and Tenebrae.”
“Niflheim does not need goodwill. Not with the sheer amount of force they have at their disposal.”
“They do if they want to keep the blessings of the Oracle. Which, as we both know, means a lot more to Aldercapt than it used to.”
“You know, I am still skeptical of that.”
“If what I heard in Vogliupe is correct—”
“And that is a very big ‘if’.”
“—then it would be a great loss of public approval for Aldercapt to lose the goodwill of his wife. Given that the Oracle had been the only one able to calm the Glacian after Niflheim angered her, I think it’s fair to say that she has more than a little sway.”
“I still cannot understand Sylva’s decision to marry that man,” Regis sighed, setting aside his file. “Has the little one settled?”
Rosea blinked up at Cor, decidedly not settled. When he told Regis as much, the King reached out over the desk for her.
“Tell me, Rosea, have you any secrets you’d like to tell us from your time behind enemy lines?” Regis cooed as he held her, seemingly no longer finding her to blame for the Prince’s cold. Rosea merely burbled at him, so he continued. “No? Well, then perhaps you may regale us with your vast and terrifying intellect, or your ingrained combat skills, or whatever it is the council thinks you are capable of, hm?”
“Are they still on about that?”
Regis chuckled, “Only a few, thankfully. Behind closed doors, of course, where they think I cannot hear. Apparently, the resounding conclusion that she is behind on her milestones has been enough to kill off all but the most ardent grumblings that you are enthralled by a Niflheim war-machine.”
“This Niflheim war-machine has finally figured out cups.”
“Oh? What a terrifying development indeed.”
“Horrifying. I almost lost my coffee to her reign of terror.”
“Anything but that,” Regis said with the first smile he had shown Cor all morning. “Well, regardless of what your agents have to say, I hope it is nothing that will hinder little Rosea’s transition into a Lucian citizen.”
“—Regis—”
“I hope to push the council into deciding on it soon. I would very much like for her and Noctis to be friends. Gladiolus is a tad too big for him right now, and there aren’t many other candidates for ‘royal playmate’ in Insomnia at present. I think we may yet settle for the daughter of the Marshal, hm?”
Regis was giving Cor a look. ‘Accept this gift for what it is.’ Cor nodded sedately.
“Of course.”
Chapter Text
The trainees stared at him with something approaching abject horror, but Cor ignored them. Usually, he took immense joy when they looked at him like that. Usually, he postured with his sword at his side and a casual hand on the pommel just to watch them squirm under his impassive stare and barked orders just to watch them trip over themselves in their rush to follow them.
Usually, he didn’t have Rosea strapped to his chest like a time-bomb.
Granted, he still barked orders and glared at the trainees until they were running laps around the yard, but there was something distinctly less cathartic about it, with her listlessly dangling from the papoose. She hadn’t even fought him when he had put her in the damned thing, and she hated it more than he did.
He ran a gentle hand through her hair as he watched a couple of trainees peel away from the herd to retch on the sidelines. He made note of the ones who slumped off afterwards, and those who rejoined the others, contemplating their rankings in his head as swiped a bit of drool out of the corner of Ro’s mouth and wiped it on his pants. She burbled at that, annoyed with him for touching her face and huffing until he gave her his thumb to squeeze.
He had to yell at one trainee for running backwards—Killan, an immature show-off—before transitioning them into their paired stretches. All the while, Rosea snuffled and watched them move around the room. Cor thanked the Astrals that she was not the type of kid to sob at the sound of a raised voice. They would have never had made it this far if she had been.
“Alright, move on to drills! Arcus, help Paola with the third motion. Quill, if I see you over-reaching, you’ll run five more laps. Lyra, if you’re going to throw up again, just save us all the trouble and head to medical. Go!”
He was going to exhaust these recruits until they couldn’t think, let alone stare at him as if he had lost his mind simply because he had a toddler with him. Rosea tilted to look up at him, smacking her head lightly into his sternum to level him with a serious look.
“Da.”
“What’s up, Ro?”
“Mph,” she huffed, smacking her hand back against him for emphasis.
“Yeah?” He chuckled at her expression. From the corner of his eye, he could see some of the closer recruits pause in their motions to stare at him. “You think Killan should have to do a lap for dropping her stance?”
He looked up to level an impassive stare at the dirty blonde, who was gaping at him like a deer in headlights.
“You heard her, Killan. Lap!”
The recruit stumbled as she sprinted to the outer ring. Her partner had the good sense to at least attempt to swallow his laugh, immediately falling in with another pair to observe rather than making eye-contact with Cor. It was something Cor appreciated about the last few weeks of initial training; he did not have to spell out to them what he wanted them to do.
“Da!”
Rosea was still looking up at him, her serious expression growing scrunched around the corners. He brought his thumb up to her face again, swiping away another bubble of spit, and she grumbled at him for it. She kicked her feet in annoyance, the heels of her little sneakers thudding against his bladder. Six, he had to pee.
“Yes, Ro?”
She huffed at him.
“What do you need, kiddo?”
“Mmph” she chirped seriously.
It meant nothing to Cor. He smiled down at her encouragingly, as if that would somehow inspire a broader vocabulary into his toddler.
She kicked him again.
“You hungry?”
He hoped not. She had eaten a snack not too much earlier, and he hadn’t thought to bring any with him to the training yard. Well, he had, but he made the mistake of being optimistic that she would sleep through the whole two hours. She hadn’t even slept through the first ten minutes.
“No,” she grumbled.
“Sleepy?”
“No, no, no, no,” she shook her head. It was more like a limp flopping with her neck bent to look up at him, but the message was very clear. “Dow!”
That was a new one.
“Down?”
She nodded her head enthusiastically, making grabbing motions towards the floor. “Dow! Dow!”
Cor glanced up to the yard. It was an enclosed space, sure, but there were twenty-two sweaty trainees roughly shoving one another through hand-to-hand and a not-insignificant amount of puke on the other side of the track. Not an ideal spot to let loose his tiny terror, who had recently taken to running full tilt until she fell on her face rather than walking anywhere.
“Dow!” She smacked him again with her fists and her feet for emphasis, pointing to the floor the second he looked back at her. Six, she was a daemon.
It gave him an idea. Clarus was always on him about creating ‘teachable moments’.
“Yeah, okay,” Cor grunted, shifting to extricate her from the papoose.
She started giggling the second he started fussing with the straps, kicking into his bladder with joyous abandon and clapping. Honestly, it was a blessing considering how miserable she had been all day. This was far better than the exhausted whimpers and trying to keep her from tugging at her ears.
A few of the trainees stopped in their motions to look over, eyes wide as they watched the Marshal free his toddler from the harness and let the blasted thing fall onto the floor. He paused once he had gotten her loose, holding her slightly away from him as she flailed giddily and cackled.
His tiny little daemon.
“This is your Priority. If any of you so much as spook her,” he barked to the room, “you will all fail immediately. If she gets hurt, you fail. If she touches your fucking vomit, you fail. Understand?”
The room rang with the chorus of “Yes, Marshal!” as Cor bent to release Rosea onto her feet. As he expected, she immediately took off in a clumsy run towards the edge of the room. The trainees stood there, struck dumb as she wobbled around, cackling.
“What are you staring at? Get back to your drills!”
He paced the room after her as she teetered towards some crash-mats that had been pushed up against the wall, half an eye on the trainees as he went. The free-roaming toddler had more of their attention than the drills, as Cor had predicted.
“Arcus, watch your footing!”
“Yes, Marshal!”
Rosea was smacking her hands against the mat now, gibbering nonsense that vaguely sounded like a song. He turned to face the trainees, keeping her in his periphery as she drummed against the black vinyl with open palms.
“Miller, you call that a grab? Start over!”
“Yes, Marshal!”
“Killan, watch your stance or you’re going to run laps for the rest of the week!”
“Yes, Marshal!”
He watched the trainees slowly fall back into the rhythm of the drills, the apparent apathy of the toddler towards them taking the edge off of Cor’s previous threats. Really, he had not expected her to care about them much. Rosea had a tendency to avoid strangers, which the daycare had insisted was completely normal for her age, though they showed concern with the lack of distress she showed when being handled by people she did not know. He assumed part of it had to do with how she was treated in the lab, but he never let himself dwell on that long.
“Paola! If you were in an actual fight, Arcus would have just snapped your neck. Start again!”
“Yes, Marshal!”
Rosea wobbled back towards him, clearly bored with the mats already. Seeing that she had his attention, she grinned at him, her tongue poking up against the gaps where her canines were still growing in. She teetered back and forth, fists clenching the front of her baby-blue moogle shirt and stretching it downward as she made eye-contact. She looked between him and the trainees a few times, wringing the shirt in her hands.
He could see her make the decision half a second before she started moving, crossing his arms as she ran full-tilt towards the trainees. The trainees, who were intent on their drills. After a few moments of wavering, he decided to at least give them some warning.
“Incoming!”
You’d have thought he’d told them a missile was coming towards them with the way twenty-two heads shot up in fear. Rosea was about half-way to the closest pair—Quill and a snuffy red-head Cor had forgotten the name of day one—before the trainees moved. They all backed away as if she were some sort of rabid voretooth rather than a toddler.
“Did I say you could stop your drills? Get back to it! Just watch your damned feet!”
The ‘Yes, Marshal’ was slower coming this time, most of their eyes on Rosea, who had slowed to an uncertain wobble when their attention had turned to her. Her hands were on her shirt again as she shifted side to side, eyeing the trainees warily.
It was clear she was as nervous about the trainees, but Cor knew it wouldn’t hold her back for long. Something at the center of the room had gotten her attention, and woe betide anyone who tried to keep her from it. Cor was a little grateful he did not actually have to stop her, yet.
He probably should have brought one of her toys with him.
Sure enough, as soon as they started easing back into the motions and were not staring at her, Rosea began wobbling forward. It took less than thirty seconds for her to break out into a full run again, which was just enough time for Quill to grab the red-head and physically drag him off their mat before she careened into it, falling flat on her face.
Cor had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep a neutral expression in the wake of the horror-struck trainees’ faces. They were looking down at her as if they expected her to spontaneously combust. He held his breath as she lay there, flat as a pancake on the mat and completely still, barely suppressing his amusement at the familiar routine.
She was fine.
They didn’t know that, though. Quill looked like he was going to pee himself, and the red-head made an aborted move forward as if he was going to touch her before he made eye-contact with Cor, white as a sheet. Several of the other trainees looked about the same.
Then Ro giggled.
Her peals of laughter were muffled by the black mat she had her face smashed into, but there was no mistaking it with the way she was smacking the vinyl and kicking her feet from where they dangled off the edge. It was the same rapturous glee she had every time she threw herself onto her own bed at home, complete with the copious squirming.
Quill dropped, landing hard on his ass as he stared at her. Cor knew vaguely that all the trainees had stopped their drills to watch his daughter, who was having the time of her life on the sweaty mat, but he did not care. He was far too busy watching the red-head’s face go from white to red and Quill hyperventilate.
Yeah, letting her loose on them was the best decision he had made all day. He was going to milk this for all it’s worth.
He stalked forward, all eyes on him as he came up beside the abandoned mat. He bent down, plucking a squirming Rosea up with practiced ease, thanking the Astrals that she clung to him rather than trying to shove her way back down to the mat. Her cheeks were red, either from smashing her face against the rough surface or from laughter, but she was all smiles as she slapped both palms onto his face.
“Dadadadada!” she sang as she slapped lightly at his cheeks.
It was a conscious effort to keep his face neutral.
“Alright,” he turned to the trainees, settling Ro lower into his arms so that her hands could not quite reach his face. She immediately continued her percussion on his collarbones. “Set up for weapons training. We’re working on secondaries today.”
He wished he could take a photo of the looks on their faces. Not even at his angriest had he ever inspired such abject terror in the eyes of trainees. It was the highlight of his week.
He turned to walk back to the edge of the room, only letting himself smirk once his back was to them. Rosea was still giggling in his arms, smacking against his chest with abandon. He pressed a swift kiss into the top of her head, which had her squirming, before turning back to face the room with a schooled expression.
He watched them reconfigure the room, pushing crash mats up against the wall and retrieving the racks of wooden weapons from storage in practiced motions. Rosea was content to let him hold her, watching the flurry of movement with an equally impassive expression. It wasn’t until they began sparring that she fussed again.
Cor weighed the pros and cons of letting her loose with weapons in play, even if they were only wooden.
He wasn’t a gambling man, nor was he was a negligent one. On the contrary, if he feared even for a moment that she would be in danger around these trainees, he wouldn’t have brought her with him at all. These twenty-two recruits were all that was left of their class of sixty. With less than a month left in their initial training, they were well in the clear to advance and more than likely to be Crownsguard in two years or so.
They weren’t likely to fuck up this late in the game, and Rosea wasn’t fast enough to truly catch anyone off guard. Also, she was likely just a handful of seconds from screaming her displeasure at being kept from what she wanted. Cor really did not want her to scream.
He placed her on the ground and watched her take off like a shot.
As expected, the trainees were far more aware this time around. While none of them stopped their spars, Cor could tell that all of them had half an eye on their opponents and half an eye on Rosea. Luckily for them, Ro’s attention was entirely on the crash mats they had pushed off to the wall. Unfortunately for them, their split attention was making them sloppy.
“Ellis, you are wielding a dagger, not a broadsword! Correct your stance!”
“Yes, Marshal!”
“Killan, you are holding a shield for a reason! Use it!”
“Yes, Marshal!”
“Filo, cut—”
A flash of movement and the clatter of a weapon hitting the ground had Cor whipping around just in time to see Arcus sprinting towards the far-side of the room, their wooden lance tossed carelessly to the side. He caught on to what they were running towards half-a-second too late.
“Marshal!”
Lyra’s belated shout barely registered to him as he ran after Arcus, his eyes on the wall beyond them and the scene that played out there.
Rosea was exactly where he had left her. If she had run off in another direction, or even towards Cor himself, he would have noticed. No, Ro had still been playing with the crash mats that had been shoved up against the wall, smacking them with her hands and singing nonsense to herself the last time Cor had glanced her way.
He had thought nothing of it. The mats were for safety, after all. They were standard black vinyl, nothing fancy, and about eighteen kilograms each. It was easy for a single trainee to carry two to three at a time.
It would have been easy for a single mat to crush a toddler.
The one Rosea had been smacking her hands against was already in mid-fall. The force of its forward momentum had pushed her off her feet, leaving her sprawled out on her back as it careened towards her. She was watching it with an empty expression, hands laying limp above her head in a nauseating familiar position to how she would lay when he had first found her. She did not try to get back up or to move out of its path. Just stared upwards, unblinkingly.
Somewhere beneath the sheer fear and adrenaline pushing him towards his daughter, Cor despaired in the fact that she hadn’t even cried out for him. Any other child would have been wailing at the top of their lungs the second their ass had hit the ground. Any other child would cry when presented with a room full of strangers fighting one another; would have been sobbing as he barked orders. Instead, his daughter stared blankly ahead, with no shred of emotion to be found as the mat pressed in on her. As if laying still and silent would make scary things stop.
It turned his blood to ice in his veins.
Arcus made it long before he did, and for that, Cor was eternally grateful. The trainee bodily shoved the mat away, immediately covering Rosea with their own body as the mat bounced against the wall and slipped sideways to the floor, the edge of it clipping them in the small of the back. It hadn’t even fully landed on the floor before Cor was skidding in beside them, pushing Arcus upright so he could get a better look at his daughter.
Rosea was staring up at them just as blankly as she had at the mat.
His hands were shaking as he leaned forward, cupping either side of her head as looked at her eyes, checking to see if her pupils were the same size and combing his fingers along the back of her skull to feel for a welt. He was crushingly aware of the fact that he had no concept of what a concussion might look like in a toddler. She stared at him. He rubbed his thumb across an errant line of drool that had formed below her lip out of habit.
Rosea blinked at him once, twice, before scrunching up her face in distaste.
“No,” she shoved his hands.
Cor let out a shaky laugh of relief as she continued to squirm away from him.
“Is she okay?” Arcus asked, their voice barely a whisper beside him that was almost overpowered by the agitated mutterings of the trainees who stood at a distance to gawk.
“Yeah, yeah, she’s fine,” Cor murmured as he scooped up his squirming toddler. She was tugging at her ears again, face pulling into an annoyed pout. “She’s fine.”
Cor stood, pressing the still squirmy Rosea to his chest as tight as she would let him. He turned to face his students, schooling his face into a stern expression. He had to turn this around, fast, before any of them had the chance to go gossiping around the Citadel.
“The environment you are in now is controlled, designed specifically to allow you to focus on your forms. On the field, that is not the case. You will never know what is happening around you. Sometimes when you are fighting you will have priorities,” and at this he shifted Rosea in his arms, bringing their attention to her to emphasize his point, “that are more important that your own safety or victory. They will not always be so clearly defined. Arcus just saved your Priority, as well as all of your asses. I’m done with you for today. Clean up and reset the room. Dismissed.”
pointvee on Chapter 2 Mon 08 Apr 2024 01:15PM UTC
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MeissaShush on Chapter 2 Tue 09 Apr 2024 03:12AM UTC
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