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"Eliana, I want canteens out of belts, with the caps unscrewed."
Nyx glanced down the line of his fellow recruits, watching as they shifted minutely. Was the captain serious?
"Squad Gamma, canteens out and open," she echoed, expression completely blank. What was happening here? Nyx hadn't thought she was capable of saying a single sentence without some sort of curse word, and now she was like a statue.
He joined the rest in fumbling for the canteen strapped to the inner belt under the glaive coats. It wasn't an elegant motion, because this was maybe the fifth time they'd worn the full uniforms and Nyx was tired. He'd thought he was in shape before coming here, and he'd certainly fared better than some of the others, but it had been a very very long day. Eventually he had it out and unscrewed
"On my command, they will pour the contents onto the ground," Drautos droned, pacing past them without looking at either the lieutenant or the rest of them.
"On the Captain's order, you will upend your canteen."
The formal language, the useless echoing of words they could all hear for themselves, the very content of the order – it all seemed absurd, especially with how exhausted he was. Was this actually happening?
"Now, lieutenant."
"Pour 'em!"
Up and down the line, the rest of the squad dumped out their water, and so Nyx followed suit. It was such a fire-fucking waste of good water.
Somewhat belatedly, he adjusted the angle so the canteen was more upright and the water would flow faster. He didn't want to get anyone in trouble if his canteen took longer to empty than theirs. With how uptight the Captain was being--
"Who is this?" Drautos snapped, stalking past Nyx. "Lazarus! Why is there no water in your canteen? You drank from your canteen, didn't you?"
"I was--"
"Lt. Eliana!"
Nyx stared as the last drops fell from the canteen and he instinctively shook it, as if that would change anything.
"Yes, sir." She was still using that dead tone of voice, which didn't help this feel real.
"Was this man ordered to not drink from his canteen during the Shivsday night march?"
"He was, sir."
"Private Lazarus, you have disobeyed a direct order. You will refill your canteen and repeat all 20 kilometers of the march immediately!"
"Yes, sir."
"Fall out!"
Nyx jolted forward, ready to follow Luche because this was garulashit, but Lt. Eliana's glare froze him in his tracks. She shook her head minutely, then froze into a statue again as Capt. Drautos loomed over her for a long moment, then stalked back toward the Perry with a jerk of his head.
As soon as he was behind her, she snapped, "Dismissed." When none of them moved, she repeated the order, voice even lower. "Dismissed, you turds of Titan. That means scram!"
The cursing felt familiar at least, and so Nyx turned toward the barracks then froze. Were they supposed to salute before they left when they were dismissed, or was that for 'fall out'? They glaive hadn't been as formal as this very often, and Nyx was already forgetting. Neither Eliana nor the Captain were paying them any attention, though, so Nyx kept moving, stepping over the puddle formed from their emptied canteens.
It was such a waste.
It was stupid, too, Nyx fumed to himself later, sitting on his bunk and waiting for Luche to get back. It wasn't toughening them up, or testing their obedience or whatever garulashit reason Drautos gave. If you ran for miles in black leather in the heat of the summer, you were going to need to drink water. Even though it was night now, the concrete and glass of the city kept the heat and radiated it back at them. Not drinking water wasn't macho or whatever the Captain thought, it was deadly.
That wasn't how you ended up with good soldiers, it was how you ended up with dead ones. Heat strokes were not things you messed around with. When he'd been a kid, a teen in the next cohort up had dropped dead during training because they hadn't stopped for water, trying to push through to master a drill even though it was the heat of the day. And they'd been wearing sensible clothing and were used to the heat they were dealing with.
Even with the King's magic in them, black leather was black leather, and they were wearing two layers of the stuff on most of their body.
This wasn't being a hardass. This was going to kill someone.
The door creaked open, and Luche stood there, framed by the light. Libertus, in the bunk next to Nyx, jumped to his feet and pulled his cousin in, guiding him to the bunk and shoving a full canteen in his hand.
"I already drank," he groaned, pushing it away. Nyx noticed he still kept looking at it, though, out of the corner of his eye.
"You still gotta drink," Libertus insisted, his shoulders set in a way Nyx was all too familiar with.
Nyx shoved himself to his feet and plopped down on the other side of Luche. "I grabbed you a wrap, if you wanna eat first. Keep up your salts. You know the drill," he said, dropping the foil-wrapped package into Luche's lap.
"I knew I shouldn't have done it," Luche said, sounding not just defeated but beat. "But—"
"But you're still getting over that stomach bug. We know. You made the right call, even if the Captain had an entire greatsword up his ass." Libertus' protectiveness was always a thing to watch when it was aimed at someone other than Nyx, but Luche was looking a little overwhelmed.
"We just need to be smarter about it next time. Water's important. It's good to be able to ration it, but it's not like you can just choose to not need it." Nyx smiled at him. It still felt a little forced, but Luche finally relaxed just a little. "We'll make it work. Don't worry about it."
After all, it wasn't like Drautos had measured the water or anything. They just had to share it around and keep it even and he wouldn't find out.
It was a good way to get more familiar with the uniforms, after all. Even with whatever transformation Eliana had gone through, Nyx was pretty sure he could charm her with that explanation, as long as Drautos didn't catch them.
Two days later, when Nyx kept pace with Luche as he reattached Nyx's canteen to his belt, Eliana glanced back at them once and then kept her eyes ahead for the next five minutes. Nyx chose to take it as a win.
Two years later, Tredd Furia stood staring at the spread they'd scrounged together for the rookies graduating to full glaives. They'd gone all out on baking, and a few people had stopped by the bakeries near the train station in the Patch, and now there was a veritable feast of desserts and treats that they hadn't been able to get while under the strict thumb of the trainers and their regimen. Most of them had plates piled high, digging in like they were starving, and the veterans weren't honestly far behind them. Any excuse to celebrate was a good one.
But Furia was hanging back, lurking around the edges and just staring at the food as he slowly circled around the edges of the group. Nyx didn't know him well – he was just a rookie, and Nyx didn't have much to do with their training - but it was hard to miss the fireball he'd made his second day of magic drilling. Harder still to miss the rumors that followed that the blast had been augmented by some sort of gimmick - no two sources could agree on what it had been - rather than pure magic. Apparently he'd been an engineer back home. Maybe. Nyx didn't fully trust rumors, even when they agreed, and Furia seemed a little young for it.
"It's not a trap, if that's what you're wondering. No one's going to jump you for eating," Nyx said, enjoying how the rookie jumped a little. The kid talked a big game, but he was still a rookie, no matter what the paperwork might say.
"It's not that," Furia said, scowling. It was almost dark enough to make up for the kid's baby face. "I know it's not a trap, or else more of you would be hanging back and letting us fuck ourselves over."
Nyx nodded with a smirk, and shifted slightly to show his own plate, which had held a few of his own creations and a few of the others' but now mostly had crumbs, with just a single cracker with cheese on it. Furia glanced down, then snapped his head around and focused on it like a hawk about to stoop.
"Where did you get that?" he demanded. Nyx had to stop himself from taking a step back, afraid Furia was going to attack him for the tiny plate.
He pointed toward the wooden board that had gotten mostly buried under the other offerings as more and more people had arrived, and the kid snatched Nyx's plate and made a bee-line for the middle of the buffet, quickly locating the remnants of the cracker tray and loading Nyx's former plate with what remained. From what Nyx could see, following behind at a more reasonable pace, there wasn't much left at this point, but the kid grabbed every cracker and cheese and some of the dip, passing over the berries with a sneer.
"Craving some salt?" Nyx quipped lightly, not sure if he wanted to avoid setting off Furia's clearly hair-trigger temper or wanted to see just what would come bubbling out if he blew.
"Craving something that's not a sugar bomb," Furia sneered. He shoved a cheese and cracker stack in his mouth and chewed defiantly – Nyx hadn't been aware you could chew defiantly if you weren't a two-year-old, but he learned new things every day - but slowed down as he saw that Nyx was sticking around, waiting for an actual answer.
Furia glowered at the beer Nyx offered – which, rude, it was one of the few decent ones he'd managed to find in the city, and Nyx had been pleasantly surprised they'd gotten some for the party – but dry mouth from too much crackers was nothing anyone really stood for long, and so the kid took the tiniest sip like it was contaminated or something, then another one that might actually wash down all the crumbs.
He leaned his weight back on his far foot and studied Nyx for an uncomfortably long moment. "I'm diabetic. So is Una. So all this, "for us"? Nothing we can actually enjoy. Well. She might risk it, but I know my limits better. This is just an excuse for the rest of you to have fun, and we know it. If you really want to pretend to be comrades or whatever, you might bother trying to see us as more than just cannon fodder and actually get to know us."
Nyx couldn't find a way to make a joke out of that, so he just nodded. Apparently that was enough, though, as Furia spun on his heel and headed toward the rest of the rookies and presumably his friend. Nyx turned back to the buffet.
His first thought was how to fix this, how to get foods that the rookies could enjoy, and he scanned the table quickly before realizing Furia had been doing that first. With the long strides that didn't look quite like running but moved quicker than most people expected from a run, Nyx crossed the room and caught up to Furia before he made it to his friends. "Furia."
Furia glared at him over his shoulder, arms hunched protective around his plate. "Yes?"
"What foods work for you? What do you want?" Nyx smiled, somewhat lopsidedly. "I hear I'm supposed to listen and not just assume. So what actually works, and what do you, specifically, like? Other than cheese."
Furia rolled his eyes at the feeble joke but turned around to actually face Nyx. "The first thing is don't try to feed us fruit because it's natural sugar or whatever."
"Is that a thing?"
"Some idiots think it is. Second, Una likes the sugar-free candy but I will set it on fire if you try to give it to me, because that's the best thing it's good for. Third..."
Nyx nodded absently, trying to absorb all the information being thrown at his head like a lightning blast, and trailed along behind Furia as he moved slowly towards the rest of the rookies without seeming to pause for a breath. Just when Nyx was starting to feel truly overwhelmed, Libertus came up to figure out what was keeping him, and got interested enough in the conversation to interrupt with questions.
The next time they had a glaive party, Tredd gave him a thumbs' up over a plate piled high with jerky sticks and Luche's favorite pretzles. In Nyx's defense, he did try to warn the kid to stay away from Luche's offerings. In Tredd's, he ate every last one on his plate, even if he drank half a glass of water each time. Nyx didn't get yelled at, though, so he was pretty sure the whole thing was a success.
Ten years later, Nyx made a detour by his office as he followed Libertus away from the Freezer. With Libertus' cruches, Nyx had plenty of time to make five detours, but he still all but ran upstairs and rifled through his drawers like it could make an actual difference at this point.
He found two of the bars that Libertus liked and five of Crowe's - he'd just grabbed a new box for her now that they had been grounded inside the city long enough that she'd go through them, since no one else would touch them. For a crazy moment he thought about bringing them down to Libs, too, then imagined what he'd look like if Nyx gave them to him and nearly choked on bile.
He'd find someone who would take them, who wouldn't realize that they had once been intended for someone who was gone.
Nyx caught up to Libertus just as he finished limping up the stairs to the first floor - there was an elevator in the Perry but it was tucked away at the other end of the building and not worth the extra steps if you didn't absolutely have to take it - and followed his first friend as he always had. They ended up in the courtyard, feet dangling in the pit like they were kids sitting by the river again and Nyx wanted to bury his head in his hands and scream.
He didn't, of course. Libertus didn't need that. Nyx didn't know what he needed, what to say even after all his experience with loss, but he knew Libertus didn't need that.
Silently, he offered the bar to Libertus. Nyx couldn't fix grief, but at least they didn't have to face it on an empty stomach. Libertus grabbed it and for a second Nyx thought he was gonna fling it at the rock anchor in the middle of the courtyard -- good thing he had an extra, Nyx thought wildly -- but he eventually shifted his grip enough to tear it open and bite off a chunk like it was an MT's head.
Nyx pulled out one of Crowe's bars - cherry, of all the blasted flavors she could of chosen, it had to be that artificial cherry dung - and ripped off the wrapper so Libertus didn't have to see it.
It tasted like wood chips going down, but Nyx ate every bite.
Before he had to actually find words to talk about this, there were footsteps behind them, and Drautos appeared with a box, looming over the both of them. Nyx had to resist the urge to punch him in the ankle.
After Drautos had given his oh-so-noble speech and left Nyx holding Crowe's effects, after Libertus's rant and the Kingsglaive patch left lying in the sand, after the ruin of every part of Nyx's life that was left was set on metaphorical fire, Libertus paused as he stormed away.
"I'll keep in touch," he muttered.
Nyx clung to that hope.
It paid off two nights later, when his phone rang in the middle of the night.
"Nyx," Libertus sighed. "I'm not... I need. Somethin's not right here. I need help."
"I'll be right there."