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Cor was blood splattered and blood-loss tired when Gilgamesh stood over him, sword pointing at him. “Arrogance,” he said, words tinged with an accent Cor had never heard before this day, “should have been the death of you, boy.”
His hand was shaking. It was broken, and it hurt, bone deep. Cor looked at this being - this almost ghost, whatever the hell he was, and flatly answered him. “I lost. I'll take my death. Stop just standing there, and do what you've done to everyone else that has challenged you.”
Gilgamesh paused. Looked at him. “No.”
“No?”
“You will be useful to the Kings of Lucis. You may be young and arrogant, but that can be beaten out of you. No, you will live. You will live to serve the Kings until the Martyr King releases you, and only then, may you leave.”
Cor stared at him.
Gilgamesh’s sword glowed, and -
Buried itself deep into Cor’s gut, into the ground underneath him. He choked on air, his stomach acid spilled out onto his legs, giving off a smell that had already burnt into his nose from the war. Cor lost blood he couldn't afford to lose.
But he lived.
Oh Astrals, he lived.
One, two, three - he was out of potions, stumbling towards a haven. He didn't die when Gilgamesh killed him (one). He didn't die on the way to safety (two), and he didn't die when the daemons found him stumbling to a haven, so close but so far (three).
He lived when his friends found him and gave him elixirs for his wounds. He lived when they scolded him for doing something so dangerous for no good reason. He lived when he figured out that he could take all the dangerous missions and not be hurt by them. He could take the heat away from his friends in battle and he would always live.
(But he wouldn't do it recklessly. He's learnt more than that, and for his friends’ sake too.)
He didn't die in Altissia, saving Wes from a too big group of MTs (four). The echoing gunshots of guns already fired hiding the ones that killed him.
Later, they still left Altissia without Weskham, but he was still alive. Hurt, but alive. And unwilling to leave here.
Cor survived that - and years after that he was still surviving. Being a bodyguard of kill Mors hadn't killed him, and it didn't. Mors died first, leaving Regis to be King. Leaving Cor to be able to take more missions. And he survived them too - most of them.
He got up, carried on living.
Five, Six, Seven, Eight - weren't that exciting. Maybe he wasn't as careful because he knew it wouldn't stick. Maybe he wanted to strike back after a teammate died. But he didn't die, and no one ever saw him not die.
Nine though - it was a bad one, a new daemon that no one in the squad had never seen before. A new daemon that killed all of Cor’s squad and didn't kill cor. He didn't think anything of it when he was limping away from the dissolving corpse of the daemon and - Ten.
It was a slow death. Way faster than it should have been, when Cor read medical reports of other people later, but it was slow compared with guns and swords and everything else. A cough. Being irritable. The light hurting his eye. A headache. Coughing. Coughing. Coughing. Black. Havens feelings wrong. Coughing. Throwing up black. Whites of his eyes being - grey. He's glad he decided not to carry on to Insomnia when he figured it out.
Dragging himself to a remote haven and screaming at the pain. Bleeding black though his eyes and it dissolving, haven pulsing blue. Bleeding and bleeding and bleeding and - black, to muddy, to red. It might have counted as more than one not-death really, with the illness and the haven and the bleeding the infection out. It was still early, really. He ‘died’ of it way before most people even started showing symptoms.
(Maybe it's because there could only be one -)
It's hard for it to infect your blood when you have none, too.
Then, there were the suicide missions. Things Lucis needed, but were too dangerous. Things Cor convinced Regis to send him on, helped by his nickname of ‘the immortal’.
Those not-deaths didn't really count.
Then, there was that glaive.
(Ten, jumping in front of something a rookie guard shouldn’t have to take. They shouldn’t have even been there, the mission was meant to be easy.)
Ulric.
He was cheerful, too cheerful really, and had decided Cor was his friend. He wasn’t wrong, but-
(Eleven?)
The pats on the back from Nyx, the jokes and puns and the one time he made Cor cackle in amusement. How Cor was forced to stop putting sugar directly into the fancy coffee machine Clarus bought him because Nyx liked coffee bitter. ‘Like his soul’, in a completely unique joke Cor had never heard before, as Cor himself was drinking coffee with condensed milk in it, rolling his eyes at the man.
The way that Cor kept finding Nyx’s clothes in his apartment, and kept losing some when Nyx was over.
The way Nyx kissed him when he came over.
(Twelve? He already hated Cerberuses before this, damn it.)
The way Nyx was reckless, but heroic - or reckless and heroic, it was a debate.
The way that he put his life on the life for his fellow glaives.
How he came back from missions, tired and bandaged up, curling into Cor’s bed and taking over his entire pillow.
Glaives and Guards never were put on missions together, for better or worse.
Until they were.
(Thirteen. It was better that he didn’t have enough antidotes than someone else, after all)
The seething mass of war that the empire put out time and time again was enough that guards and glaives were fighting together. Nyx sometimes being so close he could check he’s okay, and sometimes Nyx vanishing and minutes of nothing.
It was a battle, it was war, and Cor knew it well.
It never got any better.
And then Nyx slipped. Too many MTs, too many daemons. Putting himself in a bad position just to save someone else.
Cor saw.
He ran, slicing MTs, forcing his sword deep into daemons, and ran. Just seeing Nyx in a corner, unable to warp away because of the gunfire. They were easy to kill, when he was close enough. The daemons were harder, but they still fell, and Cor was so close.
Close enough to see Nyx open his mouth, shaking his head a little, like there was something he could see and Cor couldn’t.
MTs. Just two. Two. Hidden in the shadows, a broken wall covering them. Guns raised and aimed.
And it wouldn’t kill him, would it? If they shot him, instead of Nyx. Cor kept moving, kept running, even as Nyx yelled “don’t-”
Astrals, Cor hated getting shot.
(Fourteen. They aimed for the head.)
Cor woke up to arms around his chest, a warm body holding him close. They whined, like their heart was breaking, and the hand on his neck shook.
“Cor.” They said. “No - no. You can’t. You shouldn’t have - Ramuh, Cor no-”
There was a bullet in his head. Not for the first time. He could feel it slowly wriggling out as his tissues healed. Cor couldn’t open his eyes just yet, his body becoming his again bit by bit - but he felt the wetness on his face as someone sobbed above him.
Nyx?
Astrals, Cor hoped Nyx was in better cover.
He started to feel his body again. His fingers responding to his attempts to move them, his legs fuzzing back into life in painful detail.
Nyx was still crying, still stroking Cor ever so gently.
And Cor slowly opened his eyes.
There was blood on Nyx, more than there was before - all Cor’s. Fresh, red blood, and pink - at least Cor knew that brains grew back the fastest of everything.
It took a moment for him to be able to talk - a quiet “Nyx” that was unnoticed over the shaking sobs.
“Nyx,” Cor tried again, and Nyx flinched.
“Cor?” His voice broke, and he slowly, carefully, looked down.
Cor blinked up at him.
“Cor?!” Very quickly he was held tighter, hands running over his face, checking his pulse. “You were dead. It shot you in the head.”
“It didn’t stick. Never has.”
“...the Immortal-”
“It’s closer to the truth than they expect. Are we safe here?”
“Yeah, we’re hidden. You really are okay?”
“Yeah, Nyx. Yeah.”
“The King doesn’t -”
“Only you know.”
“How ...?”
“By being stupid - reckless and feckless, and pissing off and impressing something I shouldn’t have been anywhere near to. He could have just killed me - but he did the opposite.”
“So you live.”
“Nyx, I’ll live until the last Lucis Caelum King lets me free.”
Having Nyx settled heavy on top of him, napping and snuffling. The sunset shining through the blinds he can’t close because of Nyx. Cor turns his head wraps another arm around his partner and closes his eyes.
(When the time comes, it will come.)
(When the Last King, the Chosen King comes, they will come.)
Nyx is warm and loving and there.
Cor is alive.