Work Text:
It’s silly.
But in all this time of knowing exactly who Micah is, where he came from, who his family was, it had never quite hit Marcassin that he wasn’t actually a fully trained personal guard.
It shouldn’t be a hard thing to forget. Though it isn’t as if Micah is unfit—he went through the small amount of training required to be a low-ranking guard, after all; though they were so understaffed they were accepting so many inexperienced candidates in those days—he doesn’t quite have the body of someone truly trained for combat, nor does he keep to the proper way of carrying himself. He follows palace etiquette well these days, yes, but even in his brokenhearted haze, Marcassin had been able to tell he learned it rather clumsily—speaking out of turn, going places he shouldn’t, that sort of thing. It’s sweet; it’s good, because without the solid presence on the other side of the door, walking Marcassin through panic attacks like he was any other citizen, he’s not entirely sure what would have become of him. Any guard trained in interacting with royalty would never bring his lunch with him to eat it with Marcassin, and so, thank god Micah is not trained in interacting with royalty.
Albeit, he took to the management side of the whole “captain” position very well. A few bumps in the learning curve, yes, but nowadays he handles position assignments and training schedules and performance assessments easily, and Marcassin considers that maybe hiring the grandson of a businessman over the person who can hit the hardest comes with certain benefits.
(He had referred to Micah’s grandfather as a “businessman” with a certain delicateness to his tone, once, and Micah had laughed about it for a good ten minutes.)
In any case: Micah is not perfectly trained for combat, for the simple reason of how suspicious it would look to stick the captain of the guard in a class of newer trainees. While it’s not exactly the palace’s best-kept secret that their captain was promoted up from a low rank on the Emperor’s broken whims, they would still like to keep it private for as long as possible.
So: staring down a person dressed in black clothes, pointing a dagger in the direction of Marcassin’s throat in the hallway to the kitchens, the spear that Micah raises a little too late to be intimidating doesn’t actually help the panic. Instead of thinking ah, it’s okay, my personal guard will save me, Marcassin’s first thought is, Micah needs to get behind me. Which is, perhaps, not what you want to think about your personal guard.
The dagger is shaky in the soon-to-be assailant’s grip. Marcassin can see rather a lot of his face, actually. It’s a miracle he got past the guards, though he supposes it wouldn’t be the first time someone without experience breaking into palaces got in. Updating the defenses had fallen to the wayside with everything Marcassin needs to fix in the aftermath of his... illness, but faintly, he thinks, maybe they should put it a little higher on the priority list.
A bit worse: the spear in Micah’s grip is also a little shaky.
“Micah,” Marcassin says, heavy emphasis that he hopes communicates don’t and also perhaps you should back up.
If it does, Micah doesn’t listen. Instead, he inches the spear closer to the man standing in front of them, and Marcassin’s watches his eyes flit between him and Micah in panic, desperate. He sees it coming long before Micah does, the traces of a start towards them both, and sees the line he’s taking towards a gap in Micah’s armour.
Marcassin shoots forward, his hand catching the assailant’s before the knife can hit Micah, arm going underneath the shaft of the spear. The tip of the blade inches from Micah’s side, Marcassin wastes no time in forcing it away while Micah finally staggers backwards, allowing space for him to smoothly slide his wand from his holster with his free hand and just lightly tap the stomach of the intruder... with a Pulse.
He flies back, landing on the floor with a loud crash, dagger going wide and skidding across the polished floor. The commotion appears to finally alert some other guards in adjoining rooms, who all come rushing in tripping over themselves to pin down the man, and Marcassin steps back to stand with Micah.
They stand there in silent shock for a moment, watching. “Um,” Micah says, “are you hurt?”
“No.” Marcassin turns to him instead of watching a dozen swarming guards all try to force handcuffs on someone who really isn’t struggling. “Are you? He didn’t nick you, did he?”
“No,” Micah says, shaking his head. There’s sweat forming on his brow. “No, he didn’t.”
“Good,” Marcassin says, nodding briskly. “Great.”
They watch the man be carried off, weapons and all, and Marcassin gets a verbal check from a handful of other guards, and then they’re alone in the hallway again as if nothing had happened at all, because of course Marcassin is safe when the captain of the guard is right there. It strikes Marcassin, only then, that Micah isn’t trained for this, and is in fact barely trained to be any kind of palace guard in the first place, and that the man he has been technically relying on for security is essentially a glorified assistant. From the black market.
“Hm,” he hums out loud.
“Sorry,” Micah says. It feels a little like Marcassin is his personal guard, rather than the other way around.
“Oh, no, it’s not your fault,” Marcassin insists. He fiddles with his wand as he puts it back into its holster, feeling the traces of power still in his fingertips. “I do wonder if we should train you properly, though.”
Micah shuffles in place a little. “And who would be doing the training?”
—
It’s almost nostalgic.
Standing out on the Pig Iron Plain, Marcassin points a sword at a rabbot and watches Micah follow his movements. He hasn’t done much swordfighting since he was a teenager, since before his heart was shattered and a piece was stolen, yet after he was given the sword he’s holding and begged his previous guard captain (who had been fired for taking a different route to his usual through the palace one day during some of Marcassin’s paranoid hysterics and had declined the apologetic offer of a job last month) to be taught how to use it. In a simple motion, he darts forward and strikes, the poor creature making a mechanical squeak as it flinches backwards but doesn’t quite go down; he steps back to where Micah is, and gestures at it.
“Your turn,” he says, and Micah gives him a skeptical look, but—loyal as ever—draws his sword and points it to the rabbot in the same way.
His movements are clumsy, unpracticed, and the rabbot dodges his first strike easily enough—but the second one hits, a rough slash against metal, grinding against the helmet. It’s a start.