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“Hey Major, we got a live one over here!”
Cor paused, looked up over the six foot smoking pile of machinery he was clearing. The only thing stopping it from avalanching and crushing him was a steel girder, easily as tall as a man and wedged in tight.
“Get them out and stabilise them,” he called back, pulling scrap electronics from the debris. He wasn’t entirely sure what the Niffs were doing with so many servos, but he’d make sure these particular nubbins were no longer usable. “See if we can’t extract something useful from him.” He continued to sweep aside each top layer as it was uncovered; if their intelligence had been correct, this had been an array of servers. The information that could be gleaned from the drives, if they survived, was too potent to pass up.
There had been no intention to damage, not really. They’d infiltrated the Imperial stronghold, a base for their infernal machines to be oiled and tuned, and had orders only to gather information. Whispers had come in from the field about eerie Niff soldiers who marched in perfect form, who couldn’t be distracted with questions or pleas for help. Soldiers who wouldn’t be stopped by children. But then a recruit - a Zu-brained recruit under his command no less - had tripped an alarm whilst creeping through the hangar. Almost immediately they were surrounded, and Cor could see them now: the blank faces of soldiers who knew precisely where to strike and how hard to hit.
They were good, but within a few parries Cor had spotted a weakness in them: predictability. They’d been trained so well to carry out executions that actually thinking was a lost art. It was the soldier behind him who’d caused the deluge. As he advanced, he’d made the small but fatal mistake of assuming Cor was anything less than godlike; the pommel of Cor’s katana thrust into his abdomen with precision. Toppling backwards, his firearm, poised to shoot and aimed at Cor, sprayed bullets at the ceiling and shelving behind him. He’d been too shocked to shout as metal tumbled down upon him, crushing the man and killing him instantaneously. Hopefully. Cor briefly felt sorry for him: he couldn't help being born a Niff any more than Cor could help being born in Lucis. And borders changed all the time, anyway; a kid born today in Galahd could face off against his own grandfather born in the same town sixty years before.
Something within the struts must have hit a power supply, because there was a spark and a bang from within the mess of metal. The air turned grey with smoke, and Cor’s men dropped to their bellies, cloth drawn up over their faces to protect them. Oddly, the Niffs seemed unperturbed by the bitter stench in the air, continuing to scour around the shelving for the Lucians in hiding. As Cor signalled to his men to retreat, an Imperial soldier at his one o’ clock began to choke. Fierce coughs wracked his body, leaving him bent almost double, and yet he continued to search. His breath rattled, throat too sore to gulp down air into his starving lungs, and finally the Niff dropped and became still.
His teammates couldn’t have missed it, and yet they continued unperturbed despite their own struggles to breathe. The dead soldier was not so much stepped over as stepped on; Cor winced as he heard the cracking of bones underneath booted feet. These men were trained to kill, not to fight.
Cor crawled to the doorway, breathing shallowly through the scarf he’d pulled over his nose. He felt the heavy thud of boots hit the ground behind him, quickly and without faltering. The owner spluttered but, as though possessed, advanced on him steadily. The door was mere meters to Cor’s right, and he had scant air to push into his lungs, to bolster himself with as his legs failed him. He heard the smooth click of a rifle behind him, and rolled over, his shoulders pressed to the wall, to meet the face of his executioner.
Blue eyes blinked, almost a mirror to his in brightness, and Cor was shocked to realise he was looking back at a child. “You don’t need to do this,” he started to croak, but as soon as he opened his mouth he realised his mistake. His throat seized up at the acrid stench, and it was all he could do not to choke and draw in more breaths of acrid air.
The kid had his rifle trained on him, hands holding steady. His face was not the dispassionate mask that Cor had seen on the rest of his troop; he looked pained, the corners of his mouth upended in a grimace and his eyebrows drawn together. The kid opened his mouth, maybe to speak, maybe to cough; in either case, he started hacking, barking deeply in the quiet of the hangar. There was a crack, and Cor felt a bullet whizz past him and an excruciating pain from somewhere on the right side of his head. He immediately clapped his hand to the source, and felt the pulpy mess of his scalp beneath his fingers. A brief examination confirmed he’d been clipped; nothing he wouldn’t survive.
With a clatter, the boy dropped his rifle and fell to his knees. The world turned black.
The room had cleared once the doors were open, and Cor hauled himself outside to breathe in air only mildly polluted by vehicle exhaust. His head wound irritated him, and had he been alone he’d have put up with it - but he was a Major now, and as such had to provide some form of example. He dutifully allowed Vectis, a cadet and their medic, to swab at the cut with alcohol and to stitch it up; she told him, grinning, that he’d still be just as pretty once it healed.
They crept back into the hangar, fanning out in pairs to watch for remaining Niffs who would be alerted to the commotion. The building was silent, save for a pair of pigeons nesting in the roof. The light filtering through the windows had that special hazy quality of a late afternoon, dust motes in the air giving everything a golden sheen. Night would fall before too long, and the threat of daemons urged Cor forward.
Now he was pulling drives from the the debris, a cluster of three or four found packed tightly together. He yanked at the wiring and they came free, shifting the upper layers of metal and dust from above them. Cor stepped back and passed the discs to a cadet waiting with anti-static bags, and as he did the entire mountain collapsed and flooded the floor with electronic paraphernalia. The others had gone ahead with the Niff hung between two of them, arms looped behind his back in a pair of cuffs, and Cor silently signaled to the remaining soldier to follow them. He gave one last sweep of the vicinity, satisfied that all they could glean had been pocketed, before rejoining his squad.
There were murmurs in the air that died as Cor approached, and he gave his team a once-over as he pulled open the van’s passenger door. The Niff was slumped in the back, vaguely upright but head hanging loosely between his shoulders. Smaller than expected.
“Quit dawdling,” Cor hissed, throat still raw from smoke.
“But, Sir—”
“We don’t have time. Let’s go.”
“Who’s the newbie?” his driver asked, lifting the clutch heavily, and the van gave a little jolt as it shot forward.
“P.O.W.,” croaked Cor, “and I doubt he’ll be missed. They’ll kill ten of their own if it means getting one of us. We’ve probably done them a favour.”
“So those rumours were true? About them being machines?”
“Not machines,” he replied. “More like ghosts.” He rapped sharply on the plastic partitioning the cab from the back of the vehicle, slid it open in wait.
“Sir?” Their radio operator, a young man everyone called Tack for some reason, popped his head through. “Messages?”
“Please. Let them know we’re bringing a plus one; they’ll need to ready a cell. If they have any questions, tell them the Commander can debrief me.”
“Understood, sir.” Tack lingered, his mouth pursed as if to continue but waiting for permission.
“Speak up, cadet,” Cor said softly, his eyes fixed on the darkening road ahead.
“It’s the Niff, he’s…” But Tack faltered, his voice petering out to nothing.
“He’s what, Tack? Alive? Dead? Human?”
Tack sighed, his words wavering. “He’s a kid, sir. Just a little kid.” Cor let the words hang between them, heavy. “Sir?”
“Make him comfortable, cadet.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“For fudge’s sake Cor, what’s this I hear about you bringing home a souvenir?” Clarus had a way of cutting straight to the point during debriefing. It hadn’t changed in all the time Cor had known him, barring a new propensity for creative swearing. Clarus had a child now, two in fact, and had suddenly started giving a shit about language. “Not a souvenir, Clarus. It’s a Niff.”“You were asked to retrieve information, not a prisoner. What did you plan to do with them?”Cor shrugged, too tired to argue much. “They might hold information.”“A low-level rifleman? What were you hoping to discover? What dessert they serve in the mess hall?”“That, or structure, routines, locations. Useful things.” He shifted weight from one leg to the other, uncomfortable with himself. “He’s a child, Clarus. They’re using children.”Clarus blanched. “Beg pardon?”“You heard me. This one, he’s about seven. Eight, maybe. I only saw him briefly before I came to you. He shot me.” He screwed up his mouth in a wry smile and touched his tender scalp. “Would’ve got me too, if it weren’t weren’t for all the smoke.”Clarus busied himself with shuffling a stack of papers in front of him, the corners already in perfect right angles. “You were young, too.”“This is different.” Cor finally sat, leaning on the desk between them. “I was thirteen. And I chose to be here.” He splayed his fingers out, pressing each digit into the desk. The tips of his fingers turned white. “I don’t think he did.”The captain sighed and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “And if we return him?”“He’d die,” said Cor with seriousness. “I don’t doubt it. He’s expendable.”Clarus dragged his hand down his face, looking the oldest and tiredest Cor had ever seen him. How hadn’t he noticed the years catching up on him? “Fine, we won’t send him trotting back to Niflheim. But, Cor, we must be able to justify this. You eke something new from him,or get me proof that his treatment out there was so intolerable. Either way, this one’s on you.”“Babysitting?”“Taking responsibility.” Clarus pushed his chair back and stood to leave. “Think of it as training. Plenty of the recruits we’re seeing now can barely tie their own shoelaces.”Cor stared at him, at a loss. He had enough on his mind without a brat for a project. “You cannot be serious.”“Oh, I’m very serious, Cor.” “The kid shot me.”Clarus paused, his hand on the doorknob. “So he’ll make a good recruit. Let me know how it goes.”
Lucis was, as a rule, not in the habit of taking prisoners. For one, it was rare that they were at enough of an advantage to press onwards in a campaign. Holding their current borders was difficult enough. Still, there was the odd occasion where an enemy combatant was found on this side of the wall, and the Lucians treated them with grace and compassion when they were. It was in the smallest of the three darkened holding cells that Cor found himself, feeling more like a giant than ever as he sat in a chair across from the child.Someone had given the boy a fresh set of clothes to wear, something requisitioned from the back of a closet and far more age appropriate. They lay next to him on top of the small cot, pressed and crisp and ignored in favour for his fatigues which still stunk of ash and smoke. The kid sat as straight as a reed, his eyes darting about the room and taking in anything but Cor. The cuffs still sat around one wrist, one jaw free to lock around the other at a moment’s notice. They clinked as his hands fidgeted in front of him, thumbs worrying his knuckles.Cor opened his mouth several times to speak, but found each time the words caught up in his throat. He’d never been good at speaking to people, let alone children. What did they like? He’d tried speaking to Clarus’ boy once, and had found no common grounds for discussion. The Prince was slightly better, having learned sarcasm young, but Cor still found him and that weird friend of his somewhat unnerving. Children on the whole, he decided, were terrifying.He decided to just dive in with questioning the boy, and had uncapped his ballpoint when he realised the child was trembling. The room seemed warm enough, but without thinking Cor stood and pulled the blanket from the end of the bed. Unfolding it, he draped it around the boy’s shoulders, squatting in front of him to bundle him up. From here he could see now that the kid was crying, fat tears plopping down his pale cheeks and into his lap.What were you meant to say to children when they cried? Cor couldn’t remember being comforted much when he was younger, but then he couldn’t remember crying very often either. He’d been hugged by men he’d considered friends, definitely - Clarus was a cuddler, Regis less so - but then he’d been older, and most usually it was at times of good news.In the end he settled gripping the kid by his upper arms, squeezing firmly. The child gave an audible sob, and something inside Cor twanged like the string of a guitar being plucked.“Hey,” he began, his voice entirely too loud and too harsh for the little room. He tried again. “Uh… what’s wrong?”The kid gave a wail and his entire body convulsed again, snot streaming from his noise. He rolled his neck to wipe his nose against his shoulder, leaving a clear streak of it on the blanket. Cor had seen worse, had certainly touched worse; nothing said field medicine like rooting through a guy’s asshole to find a misappropriated carrot.“Kid, you’ve got to talk to me. I can’t help if you don’t.” There was another loud sniffle, and the child finally looked Cor in face, granting him a glimpse of hooded blue eyes, wet and red with tears. “You’re going to hate me,” he finally said, soft and quiet as feathers.“You don’t know that. I don’t even know you yet.”“I tried to kill you.”“And lucky for me you’re a lousy shot. Look,” Cor said, and he knelt on the floor to give the kid a better look. “I’m not even going to get a scar. I can’t milk something this pitiful for sympathy.”The boy nearly smiled. Nearly. Cor took that as a sign that he was getting somewhere.“My name’s Cor,” he said, “Major Leonis to my subordinates. What’s your name?”The kid looked away again. “I’m not meant to have a name. I have a number.”“And what’s that?”The kid straightened up and looked ahead, his eyes unfocused but aimed somewhere past Cor. “My designation is zero-one-nine-eight-seven, Infantry division, squad 16. Rifleman.”“Okay, Zero-One-Nine-Eight-Seven. If you were to have a name, what would it be?”The kid shifted again, eyes focusing again. Cor noted golden freckles blossoming across his nose and cheeks; his head was buzzed close to the scalp, but when his hair grew in it’d probably be light. So unusual to see in Lucis. He fixed his gaze on Cor, mouth decidedly set in a firm line.“I’m not sure I can remember.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Generally, mealtimes in the Citadel were simple and familial. You could choose to hide yourself away in whatever apartment you’d been granted, or you could rub shoulders with your colleagues in the mess hall. Cor would usually skip the latter, having spent hours each day with verifiable idiots. He enjoyed time to himself in the dark quiet of his rooms, although his efforts to cook for himself were usually pitiful.
The kitchens were curious when he ordered two trays of food to be sent to the cells; they’d not had to cook for a prisoner in a long time. “Aren’t we s’posed to feed them, like, dry bread and mouldy water?” Cor silenced them with a steady glare and waited, looming over them in the doorway, until they slopped the night’s stew into two bowls, two puffy dumplings apiece sitting on each like fat clouds.
When he arrived back in the cell, the kid had finally shed the stinking fatigues and sat swimming in a t-shirt far too huge and emblazoned with the name of an old kid’s TV show that had made a comeback recently. The cheerful colours were a stark contrast to the kid’s face, pale skin and pale hair and pale eyes, moon-like in the dim light.
Cor slid the two bowls onto the bakelite table and fished cutlery from his back pocket. He’d foregone knives - Clarus would never allow it, for one - and hoped that the meat tonight was soft enough to cut with a spoon. It looked like garulessa, which had to be hunted outside the walled city; provided the cooks weren’t complete fuck ups, it’d be tender at least.
He dragged a chair over to sit in front of a bowl, standing behind it as he gestured the kid over. “Come on, sit. Eat.”
The kid looked at the place set for him. “That’s for me?”
“I might be big, but I don’t need two dinners. It’s for you.” Seeing hesitation in the kid’s stiff limbs, he continued. “You’ll feel much better with hot food in you.” He watched the boy slowly unfold, saw now what a skinny little shit he was in some other child's cast-off shorts.
“Are you sure I’m allowed this?”
Cor resisted the urge to boggle at him and instead just nodded. “You can even have more, if you want it. Come on, before it gets cold.” He took his own seat and neatly divvied up a dumpling, soaking it in dark gravy before popping it in his mouth. “Mm, it’s good,” he lied, chewing more times than should be necessary.
The kid finally took his seat, pushing his face closer to the bowl and inhaling steam. “Is this meat?” he asked, prodding a lump of something pink and stringy.
“Apparently. Why, are you a vegetarian?”
“What's a vegetarian?” The kid watched Cor skim at the dish, golden flecks of oil coating the surface of his spoon.
“Somebody who decides they won't eat meat. That sound like you?”
The kid shook his head and started spooning stew into his mouth. His hand trembled and the cuff knocked against his bowl, a deafening clunk in the quiet. Cor was aware of the protocol, knew that until he'd been cleared he would have to be cuffed. It didn't mean he could ignore the sound, like a hammer on his heart.
They ate together in near-silence, the faint buzz of a radio at the guard’s desk filling in for conversation. A play of some kind was airing, something about princesses locked in attics. The kid was playing with his food, eating the meat fibrous strand by strand. It didn’t escape Cor’s notice; he’d known what it was like to be a child who didn’t have much.
“It’s okay to eat it,” he said, a little too gently for a guard and their prisoner. “You don’t have to make it last.” He pulled apart a hunk of meat and popped it in his mouth, as if to prove a point. The kid followed suit, and soon he’d eaten a portion that Cor deemed acceptable.
“So, kiddo, what’s your bedtime, anyway?”
The kid cocked his head, maybe thinking but mostly looking puzzled. “I sleep when I’m allowed to,” he said finally. “I don’t know what time that is, though.”
Cor checked his watch and, to his guilt, saw that it was already a quarter to nine. It’d been a horrible day for him, and a worse one for the kid; and no doubt he was exhausted. “You want to sleep now?” The kid nodded, and Cor stood, gathering the bowls and cutlery. “Go and brush your teeth. There should be some stuff by the sink. I’ll be back in two.”
Dropping the dirty dishes down by the kitchen, Cor snagged a milk carton from the fridge, replete with straw. The kid was so small, looked like he would snap if the wind blew too hard. Thinking it over, he grabbed some fruit too. Just in case he wakes up hungry.
The kid was spitting foam out over the sink, brushing hard enough to make his gums sore. He’d been brushing for a solid eight minutes now - Cor was timing him - and it wasn’t clear if it was his teeth or his arm that would give out first. Cor squeezed his arm, gently at first to get his attention, then pulling on his bicep when the kid didn’t stop. He gestured to the suds in the sink, pink-tinged with blood now. The kid blinked back, nonplussed, and rinsed his mouth one last time.
“You gonna be alright to sleep here tonight?” Cor thumbed at the room, the bed that dwarfed the kid even as it made Cor seem like a giant. Did he need to tuck the kid in or could they do that themselves now?
“I'm okay,” the kid nodded, and Cor brought his hand, thought better of hugging him, and placed it on his shoulder instead.”Goodnight, kid,” he said. “Sleep tight.”
“Goodnight, Major Leonis. I’ll try.”
Cor was called down an hour and a half later by the guard stationed by the cells. The prisoner was sick, he said, should we administer meds? Elixirs were precious at this time, reserved for the frontline; antidotes and other traditional remedies were more commonplace. “Hold off till I get there,” Cor said down the crackling line. “He's my responsibility.”
Down in the cell the kid was lurching around in the bathroom, dropping to his knees every few seconds to peer over the toilet bowl. He'd gone a weird shade of grey, and his blue eyes rolled in their sockets. Cor squatted by the toilet and looked in; a few scraps of carrot and garula meat, shockingly pink against thin bile and water.
“I'm sorry, “ groaned the kid in between waves of nausea. “I'm sorry,”
“You're alright, kiddo. Nothing to worry about.” Cor rubbed the kid’s back absently, thinking. The food hadn't been bad - well, it hadn't really been great, but it was hardly toxic. But he had been surprised about it, hadn't he? Had asked if he was allowed to eat it…
“Guess that food was a little too rich for you. Not your fault. How often did you get to eat food like that… before?”
The kid shook his head, cheek resting on the cool seat. “Not much. Sergeant says I get meat when I'm good.” He knelt up to retch horribly, but his stomach was empty now and all that came up was spit. “I'm never good though.”
Cor felt guilt bubble deep in his stomach, knowing that he had caused the kid discomfort. But there was something else there too, a hot streak of fury that threatened to surface if he didn't push it down.
“I don't see your Sargeant here, kiddo,” Cor said, reaching up for the tooth glass and filling it from the tap. He passed it to the kid, who leaned against his knees and drank it in big greedy gulps. Next came a remedy, bitter and herbal, and the kid nearly gagged at that too. “Feeling better?”
The kid nodded, rising roughly with Cor as he picked himself up. He steadied himself, and Cor guided him to bed, hands set firmly on his shoulders. “I’ll be okay,” he said, and Cor pulled back the thin duvet for him. “I’ll be okay.”
“Of course you will,” replied Cor. “I’ll see you in the morning.G’night, kid.” He pulled on the heavy gate to the cell, its hinges whining from sudden use after years of neglect, when—
“Sir.” Cor looked over his shoulder to see the kid looking at him, eyes dark and locked on his.
“What is it, kiddo?”
“Please…” The kid’s voice, quiet as snow, finally cracked. “Don’t leave me.”
Cor exhaled through his nose, thanked himself that he could sleep anywhere, and turned. “I won’t.” He sank to the floor besides the gate and stretched out, back and shoulders resting against the cold stone walls. If Clarus didn’t give him hell for this, his back would. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
"Hey, Major...Major! You alright?"
An uncomfortably bright light assaulted Cor’s eyes, burning purple spots into his vision. The desk guard was stooped over him, shoving him by the shoulder and scraping his head against the wall as he did so. The light came from the guard’s watch, light from the window focused into a coin-sized beam; Cor pulled his wrist down, irritated.
"I’m up, officer, where’s the fire?"
The guard stood and pulled his hand back, obviously disgruntled to find the major alive and well. "I thought the prisoner had overpowered you and escaped."
Cor’s eyes snapped from the guard to the bed. The kid was cocooned in duvet, one small foot escaping from the bottom. "Looks like all four foot nothing of him’s still here. What’s the time?"
"Six AM, sir. I came to check on the prisoner—"
"Check on him? More like you came to stare at the Niff." Cor rose to his full height, forcing the guard to crane his neck upwards to meet his eyes. "You got children?"
"J-just the one, sir," the guard stammered, stepping backwards. "A little girl, b-but the wife and I want to—"
"Then let me get one thing straight with you right now: that’s a child over there, just like yours. Just a kid, and he’s had a shitty start in his life." Cor prodded the guard in the chest, punctuating every word with a little stab of his index finger. "If you have a shred of humanity in you—"
"Major Leonis?"
Cor froze, his finger hovering an inch away from the guard’s sternum. His eyes slid to his right and saw the kid sat up in the cot, woken by the argument and looking terrified. He dropped his hand and turned away from the guard, smoothing over his features but unable to calm his racing heart. "Morning, kid. You sleep alright?"
"Is everything okay?" the kid asked, the duvet still pulled up to around his shoulders.
Cor attempted his best smile. "All fine. Five by five. This man was just fetching me the key for your cuffs." Cor glared at the guard, blue eyes like ice. The guard took him in for a few fatal seconds before scrabbling amongst his keys. He held the one aloft, a tiny silver thing that looked like it would bend under its own weight, and placed it in Cor’s outstretched palm. The Major snatched it away and approached the kid, doing his best not to look too terrifying as his hair scraped along the ceiling. "Paws out, kiddo."
The kid thrust out his arm and glared at the wall. Under his cuff there was a marking, some kind of tattoo of lines and spaces. Above and below it were two strings of digits ending with the boy’s "designation", and Cor felt a hot sick feeling in his stomach as he looked at it. He said nothing as he quietly unlocked the jaws, tossing both the cuffs and the key back to the guard who caught it, fumbling. "I’m sorry you had to hear that," he said, a quiet admittance. He shoved his hand deep into his pocket, ready to text Clarus to advise. "You ready to get out of here?"
Dark blue eyes widened as the kid looked up to him, and there was definitely a trace of something like fear in there, Cor found. Betrayal, maybe. "I have to go back?"
Cor paused, his hand halfway to his phone. "No, kid, no. You’ve never gotta go back there." Probably should have asked for permission first butBut?I’ve taken the POW out of holding for their own sakeCor, you do realise you don’t have to send a new text with every line, right? The phone works it out for you. I can’t believe how many times I’ve had to tell you this.The prisoner??????He’s a child, did you keep him there all night? I THOUGHT I WAS FOLLOWING PROCOTOL*protocolI’m already at work. Come to my office."Say, kid, how old are you?" They were sat outside Clarus’ office, looking exactly like two students who’d been sent to their headteacher. The kid was dangling feet that couldn’t quite touch the floor no matter how he stretched, occasionally glancing down to admire his new hand-me-down sneakers.. They were soft and golden and comfier than the boots he’d always been made to wear.
"I was commissioned one year, three months ago." There was something dull about the way he said it, like he’d remembered it by rote, and a sharpening of his shoulder blades with which to punctuate. He suddenly loosened and glanced up at the Major, his feet stilling. "I don’t know how old I was when that happened, though." Cor stashed the information in a new part of his brain he was calling The Kid File; it was sparsely filled now, but eventually, he hoped, it’d be full of things. The kid’s name, his birth date. The way he smiled. Important things, probably.
"Sir." An officer, desk secretary to Clarus, stood with boots neatly together at the doorframe. His arm was thrown up in a very precise salute, arms at the perfect 35 degree angle as illustrated in their training manuals. Cor stood and returned the gesture briefly, before striding to the door held open for him by the officer.
Beyond it, Clarus perched on the edge of his desk dressed in shirtsleeves, a heavy jacket hanging over the back. The man never sat - he had too much energy to waste, Regis said he’d only had children to try to burn off the excess - and visitors to his office often found themselves subject to stand-up meetings for hours at a time.
On his right stood a man that Cor recognised with some distaste, Titus Drautos. Recently promoted, he was the Captain of a new unit that was forming out of the dregs of the old Army, rumoured to be Insomnia’s last push against the Empire. He was a man who pushed at his recruits until they excelled or snapped; there wasn’t an ounce of compromise in him. Still, Cor admitted grudgingly, he’s decent in a fight.
"Leonis - the door," he said, and Cor was certain he saw Clarus rolling his eyes at the cockiness of the demand. Cor glanced through to nod assuredly at the kid sitting outside as the officer pulled the door to behind him. Without a command to follow, he’d remained precisely in place where he’d been left.
"Is that the young man in question?" Clarus pointed vaguely at the door, coffee mug in hand. There was no need to offer any to Cor; his friend fixed his own, before seating himself at the green leather sofa that dominated the far wall of the room. It was meant for distinguished guests; Cor would have to do.
"Looks like a Niff to me," said Drautos, a weird half-cocked grin on his face. "You can tell one a mile off. Why are you dragging that thing around with you anyway?"
Cor schooled his face, adopting a careful bland expression as he responded. "That’s a little dehumanising, don’t you think Titus?"
The captain shrugged, and Cor was given the impression of a vast wall of meat shifting in an earthquake. "Prisoner, then. Same difference. Stop thinking of them as humans, it’ll only bring you to ruin." Seeing Cor bristle at his words, he continued. "Take him to the training grounds later. I’m sure my Glaives could do with seeing the face of the enemy—"
"Oh, that’s some honour you’ve got there..!"
"Maybe a little target practice is in order—" Something inside Cor snapped, and he knocked his coffee to the carpet as he sprung to his feet.
"Drautos, that’s enough!" Almost immediately Clarus was between them, and Cor could feel the faint fizz of magic under the fingers he touched to his shoulder. Drautos stepped back a bit, meeting his eyes with a cold stare of his own. "Need I remind you that you are Kingsglaive now, and there are expectations—"
"You have expectations, and I have standards," Drautos spat, never taking his eyes off Cor. "Do take care, Major; it’d be such a pity if anything happened to your Niff." The captain hefted himself past the two men, striding through the doors which opened before him, his boots squelching dully in coffee-sodden pile.
"That guy is such a dick," Cor huffed, flopping back onto the sofa.
"I couldn’t possibly comment," Clarus responded smoothly as he neatly sidestepped the soggy carpet to sit besides him. The leather creaked under his weight as he leaned on his knees, arm folded around him. "The Captain can be… difficult, I suppose…"
"He does have a point though, Cor," Clarus broke the amiable silence that had rested for a moment, his voice lowering to a murmur. "Is that your prisoner or your ward?"
"What?" Cor turned to meet his friend’s mild look of interest. "Of course he’s a prisoner. We arrested him during a routine mission as an enemy combatant." Clarus said nothing, merely cleared his throat and sipped on his coffee. "What?" Cor repeated. The silence left him frustrated; he was sick of having to work people out all the time.
"Cor, if he’s a prisoner then why is he out there instead of in the cells?" He leaned forward to place his mug on the table, planting his smallest finger down first to prevent a noisy clank. "I’ve never seen a prisoner without shackles and chains, have you?"
Cor shifted, resting his weight on his knees. He looked down and examined the spreading stain beneath his feet. "It’s not a good place for him, Clarus," he said. "He got sick and couldn’t sleep. You want me staying down there every night? Maybe get a nightlight fitted?"
"If you insist he's here at his Majesty's pleasure then yes, I do. There are rules about how we treat POWs, Cor, hundreds of rules and they are all formed in iron. If you lose those, then all this is is a state-sanctioned kidnapping."
"But they don't care abou—"
"It doesn't matter, Cor, " Clarus said gently. "As soon as we inform the Niffs, that's it. You've taken one of theirs from a Niff base—"
"On our land!"
"On our land, yes, but their base regardless, taken one of their men across the border in cuffs and expected them to be fine with it. It doesn't work that way, does it?"
"But what if they—"
"If they what, Cor? Thought he was dead?" Clarus leaned in closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. "They don't have a body, Cor, and even if we gave them one they'd know it wasn't him. Have you heard about the chips? "
Cor nodded. The story went that all Niff soldiers had chips shot into them when they signed up. It made them easier to keep a track of: one swift scan could bring up the service records and disciplinaries for any soldier. But he knew now that it wasn’t true, and that was one morsel of information they hadn’t had yesterday.
"The chips are just a rumour, Clarus." He held out his arm and pushed his sleeve up past the elbow, gesturing to the pale skin of his inner wrist. "They mark them here, the kid has some kind of—"
"The kid?"
Cor ignored him, his voice rising in volume. "—some kind of code inked into his skin. It’s like our QR codes, only he’s a human and not a object. He doesn’t even have a name, just a number that they’ve branded him with." He turned to face Clarus, spitting the words out like poison. The kid hated the mark, had hated him seeing it this morning. "He’s not even human to them."
Clarus was silent as he leaned back against the sofa, one leg jiggling restlessly and crossed over the other. "We’ll say he’s a defector, then," he said, after a long drawn-out minute of thinking. "This wasn’t a kidnapping. This was a rescue." He leaned forward to draw the Major into a one-armed hug, hard enough to bruise, pressed his lips to his temple. "You did good, Cor."
Cor pulled back first, the corners of his mouth lifted a fraction. "I did, didn’t I?"
Clarus clapped him on the knee and stood, using the arms of the seat to push himself up. "Six, I’m so tired. Don’t ever have kids. Speaking of which, let’s meet your young man."
Cor stepped into the outer office expecting to see the kid exactly where he left him on the sofa. Instead, he would him sat cross-legged on the floor, joined by Clarus’ boy Gladiolus. The older boy was kneeling and gesticulating wildly, aware that he had the full attention of both the kid and the secretary.
"—so they have to get together to fight the evil Zarkon, and Lance, he’s my favourite, he’s like the leg of the big lion, but then, oh hi Dad—"Gladiolus stopped to inhale, waving at his father. The kid looked up over his shoulder too, looking momentarily like a child like any other. "I was telling Seven about the space cats! Look, he’s got them on his t-shirt…"
Clarus squatted besides the two, exuding an air of Dadness as he smiled at his son. "He does, doesn’t he! Why don’t you introduce us, Gladio?"
Gladiolus drew himself up to his full height, towering a good foot over the kid. He stood with his fists on his hips and put on his most impressive scowl. "Dad, I want you to meet Seven, he’s my new friend. Seven, this is my dad." He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and leaned down to hiss at the kid. "He’s the King’s Shield and he’s super important."
Clarus held out his hand to shake, and the kid, or Seven, stared at it for a moment. "Shake his hand, kiddo," said Cor, standing over them all. The kid looked at him for a second before turning back to Clarus and mirroring his action. There was a successful attempt at shaking hands. "Nice to meet you, Seven."
"Nice to meet you, Mydad." There was a howl and Gladiolus fell ass backwards on the floor, laughing. The kid only looked confused. Clarus swallowed the twitch that threatened to disrupt the mild smile on his face. "That was a Regis-level terrible joke, I’m very impressed," he said smoothly, and much to Cor’s relief Gladiolus stopped rolling around. "But you’re right, it was very rude of my son not to introduce us properly. My name is Clarus Amicitia. You may call me Clarus."
The kid tried again. "Nice to meet you, Clarus."
"Perfect. Now, you’re going to be staying with the Major for a bit—" Clarus looked up at Cor who mouthed what and no way back at him, "so be good for him. Promise me?" The kid nodded solemnly. "Excellent. Right, you two, go off and get yourself settled. Come, Gladio, time for training. You can play space lions later." He stood and held out his hand, and the older boy grabbed it. "Goodbye, Major, Seven."
"Bye, Seven!"
Cor and the kid stood side by side, watching Clarus as he swept down the hallway with Gladiolus in tow. "Looks like it’s just you and me now, kid," he said, experimentally pressing his palm over the kid’s shoulder. There was no flinch in response, no cringing away from his touch. "Let’s get going."
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It might have been spartan in both furniture and decor, but in comparison to the cell Cor’s apartment was a mansion. Kicking off his shoes at the door, he chucked his keys into their pot on the dark wood "Shoes off," he ordered the kid, who obediently squatted to untangle his laces, following Cor’s lead after a few seconds of observation to file them neatly in the shoe rack.
The kid didn’t have much with him: the clothes and boots he was brought in wearing were folded sharply in the bottom of the carrier bag he clung to. He’d refused to let them go, a real panic filling his lungs as Cor suggested it, and he’d had to sit with his head between his knees for a good minute before they could leave.
There had been other bits and pieces that were thrust into Cor’s hands as he left: a toothbrush and paste, both emblazoned with a cartoon robot who told him to "form good oral hygiene!" Shorts, two sizes too long, "enough space for him to grow into." A games console with a flickering backlight and two games. Clearly, gossip about Cor’s project had spread as fast and far as a flood. The bag of goodies swung in front of the kid, its handles scrunched up in his two hands, and he stood nervously at the edge of the parquet, and Cor quashed the feeling of irritation when he saw it.
"Come in, kid, don’t wear holes in the floor. It’s time you ate some breakfast anyway: you wanna grow up strong, don’t you?" He opened the fridge and peered in as the kid stepped over the the threshold. "Let’s see what we got here: tomatoes, shrimp, uh, bacon - nix that last one," he said, tossing it into the bin, "-we emphatically do not have bacon." He pulled a milk carton from the fridge, bought yesterday and probably the freshest thing in there, and wondered if he could scramble some eggs when he remembered—
"We got cereal I think, Clarus left some here for the kids once, hold up a second…" Cor extracted a box from an overhead cupboard, top folded down and closed with a peg. He unfolded it and read it out to the kid, suddenly pleased that his friend had successfully dumped his children on Cor at least once.
"Chocob-Os, hoops of four nutritious and delicious grains covered in tasty chocolate. Mm, sounds good. You like chocolate, kid?"
The kid pulled a face, his eyes peering somewhere up and to the right of him like he was looking at a thought bubble floating above his head. "I don’t know. What is it?"
Cor thought back to the first time he’d tried chocolate; he was fifteen, and there’d been six squares at the bottom of his pack. He’d tried it warily at first, imaging it was something like the cakes of sugar and mint that regularly appeared. After the first taste there had been no thoughts of doling out a square a day; the bar disappeared, and he spent the rest of the week gazing longingly at his comrades settling down to eat.
"It’s just the best, kid." He put the fixings for cereal down on the table, the box centre stage. "You just want to pour a bit in your bowl, like this. Then you add some milk." He demonstrated both steps of the complex recipe to the kid, who followed it mostly successfully with only two small spillages of milk. There was a wordsearch and a story on the back of the box, and Cor turned it towards the kid to look at as he texted Clarus.Thank you for earlier Clarus. Is cereal a good food for childrenOms, you did it <3
I’m so proud <3 <3
This morning gladio caught a salmon with his fists and we roasted it on a pit fire we built ourselves before serving it with rice and picklesBut if you want to give him cereal you go right aheadThe kid was studying the box, intently focused on the wordsearch; Cor could see his mouth forming each letter, each sound made but left silent on the air. Aware of the sudden attention, the kid looked up.
"Major Leonis," he said, holding up the box, "What’s this?" Drawn on the front was a plump little chocobo, eye-searingly yellow in colour with eyes as blue as the Major’s. A green bandana was tied around its neck, its orange beak open and proclaiming: COLLECT TOKENS TO CLAIM YOUR BOKO PUPPET!
"That, kiddo, is capitalism at work, preying on your youth and naivety to induce you into buying more of their product."
The kid looked up at him dully, bottom lip poking out just enough to express his dissatisfaction. "I didn’t mean that, I meant this," he said, jabbing a finger at the bird hard enough to dent the box. Cor felt a little guilty and made a note to dial down the sarcasm. "What is it?"
"That is, or rather he is, a chocobo. They’re big birds, a lot bigger than you. People use them to go places." Cor pulled the cereal away from the kid and turned it over to skim through the story. "This one’s name is Boko, and apparently he loves mysteries."
The kid stared at the chocobo for a few moments longer, running a finger over its beak. "I like him."
"Hey, he likes you too, kid." And, leaning back in his seat, Cor launched into the story of how Boko saved all his chocobo pals from chronic boredom and empty breakfast bowls.
That night Cor showed the kid to his new room in the apartment: a guest room that had been swept and dusted and nothing else. He’d hurriedly replaced the sheets with something more cheerful than the inoffensive beige that had sat there for years, the yellow the kid had picked out brightening the room up immensely. There were no knick-knacks on the bedside table, not yet anyway, and no books on the shelves. It reminded Cor so painfully of his own childhood bedroom that he resolved to take the kid to the library the next day.
"So, Seven, huh?" he said, drawing covers up over the kid’s chin. The kid’s eyes slid to the left to rest on magnolia-painted walls. "You pick that?"
The kid shook his head. "Not really… Gladiolus asked me for my name and I gave him my designation… I didn’t think about it at all."
"Do you mind it?" Cor absently plucked some fluff from the duvet as he spoke, the hot issue of the kid’s tattoo sitting thickly between them. "We can ask them not to call you that."
"I… I don’t mind it, but…" The kid cast around for his words and, struggling, looked to Cor for help.
"It’s not really you?"
"No," he admitted, "I don’t feel like a Seven."
Cor patted the kid’s knee in a way he hoped was reassuring. "You tell me if you find a name that you do feel like, alright?" He stood and flicked on the nightlight by the bed, a white moogle that glowed reassuringly in the dark. "Get some sleep, kiddo. Shout me if you need me, I’ll just be in the next room." The overhead lamp was flicked off, and Cor was pulling the door to when—
"Major Leonis?"
He looked back at the kid, turned on his side to face the warm glow. "Yeah?"
"I’m okay when you call me kiddo."
Cor felt a fist clench around something under his ribs. "Alright. G’night, Kiddo."
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
"I don’t remember that either."
He’d been prodding the Kid for two hours now with no real result, and they were both obviously flagging in the summer heat. The Kid drooped like a daffodil, visibly wilting around the edges like he hadn’t been watered in long enough. Cor relented and threw his notebook down. There would be no more questions today. The Kid had been able to reveal approximately two things: wake up was at oh-six-hundred hours, and he was lucky to be alive.
"They retire you at six, if you don’t show promise," he’d said, fairly nonchalant, and Cor had probed and queried about what retirement meant in a land with no social care. The Kid wasn’t sure about much, just that he’d had a succession of bunkmates that had gone within months. He was capable, he said. He’d been told he was a crack shot and could count on their support throughout his career.
"And now?" asked Cor, noting now that the Kid was at least, blessedly. older than six.
"I have never much liked to hurt things," said the Kid with a shrug. "I pretended I did. I got looked at less that way."
It only took forty minutes for Cor to work out that the Kid was hooked on praise. He’d thrown him a bone, a good work in the face of questions with no answers. The Kid had only keened and come back for more, begging him for more questions that he couldn’t hope to give an answer to. A question about movements, gone unanswered for too long, had the Kid scrabbling for scraps for information to feed to Cor like bread, each morsel useless and ultimately unfilling. Cor was torn between encouraging the Kid and breaking his heart; either way, the Kid was holding out for his approval. He chose the harder way and tamped down hot leaks of thank you and you did well for the long-term greatest good. The Kid had struggled through, gazing at Cor as he revealed information with his hands clutched under his chin. We shoot targets for four hours a day. If we show mercy, we don’t sleep. They’re not scared of breaking us.
The Kid had settled down happily to doodle, something Clarus had advised would be an essential distraction to most kids. A pile of napkins and a ballpoint, half-used and leaking blue, was his preferred tool of choice for his linework. Before the week was up, Cor’s apartment had become littered with crayon artworks of colossal birds wading at the viewer, figures around them standing close enough to frame them well without touching. He gave the Kid a folder, pinched from the office on account of being the most perfect shade of gold, and it was shortly stuffed with all the paper scraps and scribbles that the Kid could come up with. One or two pictures didn’t quite make it though; deemed Good Enough, they were presented to Cor, who fixed them to the fridge with an unfamiliar feeling running down his spine.
The Amicitias had come to visit, ostensibly to give their man Jared some time to himself, but mainly to have the Kid talk to another child for once. Cor had to admit that he struggled a little when it came to children, not having had much of a childhood himself, and he found the presence of the boy a relief rather than a pest. Gladiolus came armed with comic books and a laugh that was as infectious as it was loud. They squirrelled away together in the Kid’s bedroom for hours, Gladiolus inflicting the Kid with his love of space lions and pawing through the Kid’s art folder. "These are so good, Seven!" he yelped over a particularly lurid piece, holding it up and waving it. "Can I have this one? Plee-ease?" Smiling shyly, the Kid nodded, and Gladiolus whooped before flattening the paper between the pages of one of his books.
"He doesn’t speak much, does he?" Clarus was jiggling a very small, very wriggly toddler on his lap, a small thing that Cor dimly knew was named Iris and who seemed to be fascinated with his pockets. The last time she’d been in his presence, Cor had been made bereft of his wallet and a penknife, and, in their place he received two mismatched socks.
"I’m working," Cor replied. He slid a slim file across the table to Clarus, a brief report on his findings so far. "They really did a number on him though, some of the sh--sugar he comes out with. It’s a wonder he’s coping as well as he is."
Clarus scanned through the notes, holding them at arm’s length and craning his head backwards. "Why is your writing so damn tiny, Cor?" he mizzled.
"You know they make glasses for reading nowadays, right?"
Clarus huffed and dropped the file back on the table. "I don’t need glasses, you need handwriting lessons."
"Like a hole in the head. Take it home with you. I’m a bit worried about some of the things the Kid is doing."
"Such as…?"
"Things like…" Cor hesitated, looked down at Iris, who was surreptitiously rifling through her father’s jacket for sweets. He raised his eyebrows and Clarus gently covered her ears with his hand. She shot him a look of pure fury and jumped off his lap to seek out her big brother.
"Like sometimes he talks when he’s asleep and… It doesn’t sound great, Clarus. Mind, he’s not speaking our language, it’s a Niflsmål dialect, and I’ve never been the best translator." Weskham used to deal with that for them, smoothly tripping from one language to the next as he made arrangements for rooms or teased intel from the locals. "Last night he just whined this one word out, over and over again: ‘fardeer, fardeer.’" He frowned and tried again, his tongue tripping over slippery words. "It was more loose, like a cross between a D and a T…"
"Faðir," interrupted Clarus, who wasn’t much better than Cor but at least could count to ten and order a drink at a bar. "Father… He’s calling for his dad?" He scribbled the note down in the margins of Cor’s report before underlining it thrice. "Maybe he’s one of those ‘spirited away’ children." Like many things that came from Niflheim, rumours and half-lies mingled freely, until stories that were both unkind and far removed from truth emerged. Around five years ago, a story that hundreds of Empire children had suddenly disappeared did the rounds. It went that villages would see their entire population of the under-10s disappear overnight, and requests to search for them or report them missing went largely overlooked. Soon, Lucis parents everywhere were threatening their children with the ghosts of the lost Niffs, kids who were disappeared for anything from leaving their bedrooms untidy to fighting with their siblings.
Cor buried his face in his hands, tweaking his fingers into his hairline and mussing it. "Makes sense, I guess. Poor Kid. Think his dad’s still alive?"
"You know how it is over there, Cor," Clarus said, stirring an additional sugar into strong coffee. "People disappear all the time and are never heard of again. They just get scrubbed from history. But if the boy’s father’s out there, he’ll be looking for him. Heavens knows I’d do the same if it happened to my two idiots."
There was a silence, punctuated only by the cackles of Iris as she picked on her brother. Cor smiled a little too hard, his mouth set in a taut line."I suppose, then," Cor said, slowly and deliberately, "I ought to work on finding a dad for our Kid."
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
It had been six days since the Kid came to stay, and Cor’s report of findings had gotten no thicker. The constant rounds of interviews and queries and research left the Kid exhausted and Cor frustrated, and he tamped down a temper that threatened to spill over his edges.
"What have you tried so far?" Clarus was always even-voiced, even when he should be disappointed. They were having one of the stand-up meetings that seemed to occur whenever they passed each other in the corridors. Regis always laughingly called them mothers meetings, and Cor had to suppose he was right. Sometimes he did feel he was a bit of a mother to the recruits that landed at his feet, especially now, with the Kid trailing three feet behind him like a duckling.
"Well, obviously waterboarding, but he’s not budging." Clarus fixed him with a look he usually reserved for Gladiolus, eyebrows raised and head tilted. Cor continued. "I don’t think it’s that he’s holding back on us for any reason. It didn’t sound like a happy place, he’s not exactly fighting to go back."
"He’s got to know something, Cor: training exercises, deployments. Nothing?"
"I think it’s just… locked in there. You remember Reynolds?"
Clarus nodded. Private Reynolds was the assigned driver for his unit, barely eighteen at the time, and had returned from his third mission clammy, shaking, and alone. "He couldn’t tell us what had happened for months after he came back. When he spoke it was like he was was completely hollow, and then the nightmares… But Cor, he watched his entire unit get slaughtered. That’s not—"
"Didn’t we do the same?" hissed Cor, leaning in close. "When we extracted him. He was the only survivor. We don’t know how close they all were, but that’s got to have an effect on a child that age."
"Cor, you can’t—" Clarus started, but he was cut off again.
"I killed them. He watched me." He glanced down to the Kid, who was watching the people passing at the end of the corridor. "Maybe it’s me that’s the problem."
"It isn’t you. You didn’t conscript — oh, hello, what’s this?" Cor turned his attention to the hallway behind him, and felt dread hit his stomach. Approaching them like a wall was one Titus Drautos, and Cor wondered how a man who was so hefty could move so quickly.
"Come here, Kiddo," he said, low and firm, and pulled the Kid to stand in front of him. The Kid squirmed uneasily, buffered between Clarus and Cor as the Captain met with them.
"Captain. To what do we owe the pleasure?"
"Oh, I was just passing when I saw Leonis here," said Drautos, giving Cor a shove to the shoulder. "I’d thought you’d quit; we’ve not seen you at the training grounds for a week. Too good for us now?"
"The Major has had to attend to other business recently, upon my request."
"Oh, of course, the project." Drautos sounded delighted as he dropped to squat in front of the Kid. Cor cemented his grip on the Kid’s shoulders, pulled him inches closer to him. "So you’re the Niff that’s been keeping our Major away from us. I do hope you’re worth the time."
"Drautos," Cor growled out, a warning to the bigger man to keep his distance. "You need to say something, you say it to me."
"Nonsense, Leonis, I’m just talking to our guest. Tell me, young man, have you been nice and helpful to the Major?"
The Kid stammered out a response, shrinking back against Cor’s legs as Drautos loomed over him. "Y-y-yes sir, I th-think I have be-been."
"Excellent to hear. Because he’s gone to so much trouble for you. It would be such a shame if you were useless after all. I’m afraid I don’t hold much truck with that. Waste of resources, you know." He smiled, and to Cor his mouth looked like two fat shiny slugs curling in tandem. "Well, good luck, little Niff. Try not to break."
He turned heel and glided down the corridor with far more grace than a man of his heft should possess. Cor watched him leave, his eyes narrowed. They’d never gotten along, the Captain and him, always rubbing along for the good of the Kingdom. But some narrowhearted bitterness inside Drautos had come to the fore recently, something that was sour and hard and difficult for Cor to reconcile with their duty.
"Can I break?"
Cor looked down and saw the Kid staring after the Captain, worrying at his lower lip with a bitten thumb. He pulled at his shoulder, turned him to face the other way.
"What’s that, Kiddo?" said Cor, gentler than he would have done with most people.
"Can I break?" the Kid asked again, and Cor forced himself to smile for him. Tried to block out cold dread of the Captain sneering down at him.
"Nope, can’t happen. Not when I’m around, Kiddo." He crouched now, caught the edge of the Kid’s chin with a bent finger. It was an odd feeling, to touch someone else, but the Kid was like a soldier who needed to be shown a better form, a different stance. "You know what they call me?" he said, voice raspy at a whisper.
""What?" said the Kid.
"They call me The Immortal. So you’re in good hands."
Clarus sighed from somewhere above them. "You hate that name."
"Don’t listen to him," Cor said, ignoring him, "I love that name." He unfolded himself, muscles burnt with the strain of squatting, and the Kid immediately stood to attention to follow wherever he went.
"You know, I might know something you can try. Remember when we had the Issue with Gladio?"
Cor remembered: a period of six months where the lines under Clarus’s eyes looked darker and deeper than ever, when his usual even temper would snap at the smallest of things. Cor had pulled double duty for the new recruits and the trained guard alike, whilst Clarus locked himself in his office and, apparently, "read reports".
"I vaguely recall something, yes. What did you do?"
"We had this…" Clarus held his hand up to his face and formed a beak with it, rapidly gabbing away with it. "This thing?" His face was somewhere between bemused and delighted as he looked at his own hand.
"A puppet," Cor said drily, and he was amused to see that Clarus was craning the beak of his hand to face him, fingers lined up neatly and nodding.
"Yes! That’s the word," he said, lipsynching with his beak, and Cor was struck with the life-sustaining thought of the entire Crownsguard seeing their commander like this. "Anyway, we’d just pull on old Mr Socks and let them yap away. Would you believe it, it turned out that becoming a big brother was quite the large adjustment to make."
Cor grunted, partly because he was thinking but mostly because Clarus was now pecking away at him insistently, jabbing away at his cheek. Gods had died for less. "It’s worth a try," he said, absently closing his hand around Clarus’s wrist and pulling it down. "Thanks."
Clarus’s mouth twitched at the corners as he gave in. Teasing Cor was one of his greatest joys in life. "My pleasure. I’d best be off."
"Us too. Say goodbye to the Commander, Kiddo."
"Goodbye, Sir." The Kid snapped to a salute, or tried to at least: his somewhat sloppy form gave way to the Niflheim salute he’d no doubt grown up with and been performing every day of his life.
"Nearly there," said Clarus, kindly, who demonstrated a perfect salute in return. "You’ll get there. Both of you."
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Twelve tokens. You needed twelve tokens to claim a so-called Free Boko Puppet. Twelve tokens from boxes of cereal which cost at least three hundred gil a box and had roughly the same nutritional value of a cobweb. And you had to affix stamps costing a hundred and fifty gil to a postcard which was shipped off to a PO box in Six-knows-where, before it went through a processing period of four-to-eight weeks. Capitalism at it’s finest.
The time filled with a storm of work, both at home and the office. The Kid’s room filled up slowly with oddments, smooth rocks and hardback books. The Cosmogony held pride of place bedsides his bed, well-thumbed and dog-eared. It had been Cor’s copy, once; he may have been a man of practicality, but he knew his Six, had to know them. The Kid could read, slowly, but the pictures seemed to be what fascinated him, each page examined for what seemed like an age with his nose inches from the paper.
Cor couldn’t ignore his work anymore, and after a fortnight he returned to the office for a few mornings each week. He’d run through forms with recruits, a new facet now added to his reasons of why they did this. With each new nugget of information the Kid could give to him, the hotter the anger in his stomach grew. He knew the Empire was hateful but he’d never been witness to what it inflicted on its citizens.
The Captain stayed on one morning, lounging in the sun like an overgrown lizard as Cor sweated out another sparring match against one of the tender new cadets. He was always in the corner of Cor’s vision, an unwelcome distraction, and as a result the poor recruit was pushed probably to his limit. It was only when he fell to the floor, chest heaving, that Cor ended his relentless assault. "You’re progressing well. Keep it up and we’ll make a decent Guard of you yet." He hauled the cadet to his feet and pointed him towards the door. "Hit the showers; I’ll see you tomorrow."
Drautos pushed himself off the wall as the sweaty mess of a man passed by; he turned to watch him go, face a cross between impressed and smug. "Are you always so hard on your men, Leonis?"
Cor grabbed a thin black towel from a bench and patted down the sweat that formed on his brow and pooled in his sternum. "No more so than you, Captain." Training blades, wooden and dull, lay scattered where recruits had left them. It was a poor habit, brought on by years of being mothered, but Cor hadn’t the time or the resources lately to drill it out of them. He moved from bench to bench, collecting the blades to be checked over and put away.
"I don’t need to be hard on them. They know what I expect of them. The Glaives have far higher standards than your Crownsguard." He joined Cor in his task, swiping a wooden katana from a few feet away and appraising it. "No, there’ll be no riff-raff in the Glaives. But I’m sure you’ll accept our rejects, anyway. Seems like you’ll accept any old thing. Here, catch," he said, and he tossed the blade at Cor like he was pitching a beanbag.
He snatched it from the air and slotted it neatly into the vacant space on its stand. "We accept everyone because everyone can do something for Lucis. You might well get the best, but at least we don’t outsource our pencil pushers." The next blade he pulled had a crack running down its length, and Cor put it aside to have it fixed. With care, it would last them another year or two, another few rounds of recruits.
Drautos stalked him along the benches, his boots making sharp indentations in the sand. Cor noticed it with some irritation; this new squad were going to be decked out in the most ridiculous outfits. It was all buttons and coats and glamour, and it irritated Cor that the Crownsguard were still stuck with a mish-mash of uniforms and gear gleaned from storage.
"Your Niff, then. What does he do for Lucis?"
There was a momentary stillness as a Cor paused, hand hovering over an abandoned greatsword. "I’m sorry?"
"The Niff. Your little prize from that failure of a mission you went on."
"The mission didn't fail. We got what we came for. The fact that we drew attention to ourselves is besides the point."
"I'm not talking about your little scuffle out there." Drautos stepped forward and leaned over Cor, coffee-sour breath hot on his face. "Rumour has it that everything you pulled out of there is useless. Financial spreadsheets and purchase orders." He smirked. "You toppled their accounts department. Congratulations."
Cor spun on his heel, slotting the last of the weapons into the rack with soft clacks. "Intel like that's more useful than you clearly think. Thank you for the update, Captain."
Drautos wasn't done yet. "Hoping for some info on your little project, are you?"
Not this shit again. "It would have been nice, yes, but it's not necessary. It's the kid's story to tell, and he’ll tell it when he's ready." Cor hoisted a bag of gear over his shoulder, determined to dismiss the Captain as he passed into the changing rooms. Drautos followed him, pushing back on doors that swung into his face as Cor walked through.
"And meanwhile we have a refugee on our hands whose sole purpose we know not, who takes with one hand and for all we know feeds back to the Niffs with the other!"
"And so what if he does?" Cor dropped the bag, heard the dull thud of already damaged gear hitting the hardwood floor. "Isn't it better to take that risk than to assume that all Niflheim-born are inherently evil? We have a duty to grant refuge to those in need!"
"I would think fealty comes above that. Maybe you're not the King's loyal little dog after all."
Sweet Six, Drautos knew how to push Cor’s buttons. He drew himself up to his full height, slighter in size but just as terrifying in his anger. "Who are you to question my loyalty? You, who's been here a scant five minutes, tossing about big words like they mean a shit. I tolerate you, Drautos, only because of that loyalty."
There was a clatter in the distance. Cor broke his hot glare first to take in the source; the last cadet to leave, dropping her boots as she skidded and fell on wet floor. He hoisted his bag back onto his shoulder, his ice-cold eyes fixed on Drautos. "My suggestion to you is simple: wind your neck in. If there’s nothing further, then respectfully, Captain, I take my leave." He didn’t wait for a response as he jogged towards the fallen cadet, ready, as always, to pick them up.
"Package for you, Cor."
With everything on tap at the Citadel, it was hard to remember the last time a package had come for him. The Quartermaster took care of all your practical needs; the Library was an endless supply of books, if that was your bag, and vending machines seemed to be lurking around every corner to press cold coffee into your palm and snacks into your knapsack. He vaguely recalled a time nine or ten years ago, when his friends had first started popping out babies, where an attempt was made to crochet. Twelve misshapen booties later, Cor had shoved frayed yarn into the packages which it had arrived in and crammed it all into his cleaning cupboard. The hooks were reappropriated to prop up his basil.
The doorman slid the package over the counter to him; a long, squishy parcel wrapped in blue plastic. The returns address read COLONEL MILLS PROMOTIONS LTD, and Cor realised with a small jump what was inside. "Thank you, Oleander," he muttered, tucking it under his arm. His pace quickened somewhat, propelled by the prospect of the Kid’s response to their new arrival. He dropped the bag of damaged gear in with the Quartermaster and requested a speedy turnabout on its repair; there would be thirty new bodies through the doors in the next month, and Cor would be required to put each one through their paces before they could be accepted as Crownsguard.
The Kid had spent the morning in the Citadel’s medicinal garden, after a speedy plea from Cor for any responsible adults with a spare eye and a gentle task. There’d been little feedback; whilst his colleagues were, on the whole, accepting of Cor’s new project, there were fewer who felt comfortable harbouring a known enemy. Still, there’d been one response: Protea, who was technically the handyperson but was a dab hand with a watering can, needed a hand with harvesting and pruning back borage. It had been growing quite obediently in small corner, but, left unchecked, it had exploded into a cloud of blue that threatened to take over the garden completely.
This is how Cor found him: knee-deep in blossom, each bloom a perfect star that shored up against him like a wall. He was stripping each stem of its leaves, dropping them into the cloth he’d laid over his lap, the wild blue heads left intact. They made good food for honeybees, a colony of which the kitchen had nurtured over the years and had provided the Citadel with good honey. Pollen swirled about him, caught in a current and turning the air about him into sunshine. Inside Cor, something broke.
"Hey, Kiddo," he said, breaking the quiet with some regret. The Kid looked up at him, and for the first time Cor thought he saw something akin to peace in his face, a softening around the eyes that he’d only spotted sometimes when the Kid was asleep. "Ready to go?"
"Yes, Major!" He nodded and bounced to his feet, no longer swamped by the flowers but risen above them like a sunflower. He hopped over the bank formed by borage and bark to deposit his gatherings with Protea, who kneeled in the soil and hacked away at the overgrown shrub. "As requested, Ma’am."
"Oh, such a charmer, aren’t you?" she cooed, and accepted his bundle gratefully. "You’ve saved me so much time. That would’ve taken me hours, so thank you."
"Was he alright?"
"Oh, he was perfect, Cor love, such a sweetheart." With effortless grace she pulled the Kid to her and hugged him to her soft and generous body, looked down at his crown that was slightly pink from the sun. "You come back anytime you like, alright my love?"
Wide-eyed, the Kid hung prone in Protea’s arms, the easy calm that had covered him breaking, and he agitatedly looked to Cor.
"Sorry, Protea," he said, and the woman released him with a look of confusion on his face. The Kid slipped from her to hide behind Cor, and he could feel how fast his breaths were coming now. He offered his back, solid and firm, for the kid to rest his forehead against. "He’s not really…" He cast about for the words that would explain without revealing all, would stop her from seeing the Kid as a runt of a monster; would explain that not even Cor had touched him that way. Not yet. "He’s not used to being hugged. It makes him a little bit nervous."
To her credit, Protea was immediately apologetic. "Oh I am sorry, my love. You poor bab." She settled for touching the him on the shoulder, gently, like Cor did sometimes when the Kid was in the middle of a nightmare. "Well, I shall be here, if you’ll need me." She dusted dirt off her knees as she stood. "I shall see you soon, I suspect."
Cor wished her goodbye for the both of them and she excused herself to the shed, leaving them both alone amongst the blossom. The Kid still breathed ragged, and Cor plopped himself on the floor to meet his face. He could smell mint. "Wanna talk about it, Kiddo?"
The Kid exhaled and stayed silent, but Cor knew now what this meant, had become used to this. Silence meant he had something to say, but didn’t know where to start.
"Protea was… grateful for your help today, and wanted to show you. So she gave you a hug. We do this to our friends and to our family to show that we care..." He paused, trying to balance his words carefully. "It’s meant to feel nice, but if it doesn’t then it’s alright to tell the person to stop." He reached out one arm, his usual half-reassuring half-playful squeeze, noticing freckles blooming across the Kid’s forearms and nose where there’d been nothing but plain canvas before. "You need a minute?"
There was silence from the Kid, and Cor thought he’d lost him again in his thoughts, blue eyes glazed under the heavy hoods of his eyelids. "Kiddo?" said Cor again, and was reaching out when the Kid stumbled, hooked skinny arms around his neck and leaned in. A few moments passed, the Kid’s breathing evening out against the skin of Cor’s neck; three seconds of beginning to understand, before Cor finally brought his hand up to rest between scrawny shoulderblades. He held him, pulled him closer to smell the now-familiar milky scent of the Kid’s skin and listen to his breath.
"Is this okay, Sir?" the Kid hiccuped, and Cor had to swallow a chuckle. Was it okay? He wasn’t sure how how got here, with a child clinging to him and him feeling like he kind of enjoyed it, with him buying stupid expensive cereal just to win a free toy that might unlock his closed-off brain and make him smile. With him feeling, for the first time, that maybe it mattered if he lived, now he had someone he had to be alive for.
"Better than okay, Kiddo," he replied, enjoying the way the Kid rested his chin on his shoulder and squeezing him a little bit tighter. "You do this anytime."
They sat there like that for a minute more, the sun overhead warming Cor’s shoulders and back, and for a moment he thought he could sleep in the soft grass. But there was work to do, always more work. He reached up and gently unhooked the Kid from around his neck, rattled the package which sat besides him.
"Got a surprise in here for you, Kiddo."
The Kid blinked slow, taking in first the parcel, then Cor’s unwavering gaze. The Major wasn’t quite smiling, he never smiled, but his expression just then was the closest anyone would see to one. "F’me?" he asked, and Cor could see his hand itching to grab the package; no kid could resist that curiosity. He handed it over.
"For you," he said, and the Kid squeezed the corners, felt the satisfying squish of fluff and feathers. “Hold it for me till we get home.”