Chapter Text
“Damn it, I almost had you that time!! I’ll beat you one day, Red Teeth, just wait!”
“I anticipate the challenge. If ever it arrives, that is.”
He snickered silently beneath his mask as Josekk made an obscene gesture with his hand and walked away, the younger male grinning as he graciously accepted the teasing and ribbing from the other riders. Truly he’d done well this past race - he’d managed to stay just over a charger’s length behind Nil for most of the track before a well-placed shock arrow from Nil’s bow landed in the shoulder joint of his mount and the resulting vulnerability made him easy prey for Elottak’s cudgel.
Standing casually, one hand on the flank of his charger, Nil took a deep breath of chill air. There were flurries on the wind.
Should have the kids break out the extra blankets tonight. Snow will drift before morning.
Not that he really needed to tell them, usually. Tenakth had survival bred into their very bones. Sometimes though…sometimes they were just so… young. Especially times like now, when the racing was done for the day and the group was settling down - well, as settled as these six got when they weren’t actively sleeping - and he could hear their teasing and chatter from the pens. It…soothed him, somehow, a different calm than the throb of the track but no less powerful. A small token of peace he’d been lucky enough to find. Granted, it wasn’t forever - nothing ever was - but for now it was comforting and it was his.
“Hey - you gonna stare at us all night or get your ass over here and have some boar skewers?”
He could never explain to them how they’d saved him from himself. He prayed to gods he didn’t even believe in that they would never gain the knowledge to understand.
It was quiet after the snowfall. He hadn’t thought he would appreciate it - the cold, the silence. Times past, the hush was just…too loud. After the Raids, after Sunstone - the voices came in the stillness, and they only quieted when blood flowed. He didn’t know it then. Didn’t understand. It just…was. It was only after he’d left, after he’d fled (after he’d run from her) , after he’d done his damnedest to find his end in machine battles and random fights with the unsavory types he’d run across and failed in every attempt that he stopped. He just - stopped. Stopped looking. Stopped trying. Stopped being .
And then he found them. These kids, riding their chargers down the racetracks, whooping and challenging and daring life itself to just try and catch them. The abandon, the sheer audacious daring, taking their own chunk of the world, claiming it and keeping it and anyone who got in their way could fuck themselves. The freedom .
It called to him in a way nothing ever had.
Almost nothing.
He ran from the last that had called to him. He would not do the same here.
And now? Now he seemed to have…a squad, they called themselves. Despite eschewing their assignments and bolting from the rebels, Tenakth society was entirely militant and these kids were no different. But it worked. And once he’d earned his way into the collection of machine riders they accepted him. It was…not anything he knew. He had nothing to compare it to. He was the dark one, the weapon, the one to fear. No one had ever simply…welcomed him.
That was a lie.
He huffed a sigh, watching as his breath crystallized in the mountain air. He wasn't in the habit of lying to himself. Rather, he had never been one to do so before. Maybe it was time to go back to that brutal honesty. Something about this place - the stark white snow, the serenity of the silence, nature not caring in the slightest about the comfort or contentment of the tiny beasts that strove to eke out a life in her encompassing arms…it was soothing. He could die right now and the world would continue on with nary a hiccup. It felt…right. And if his life meant so little to the grand scheme of things, then his own truths mattered to no one but himself.
It was time to face them. Those truths. Time to dig the grit and debris from those self-inflicted wounds. Let the blood flow clean again. And maybe, just maybe, they would heal.
The cold air chilled his lungs as he inhaled deeply and he relished the bite of winter in his chest.
He missed her. Sun and shadow, how he missed her.
It wasn't even the physical - hell, he hadn't so much as felt the urge to take himself in hand since that last time. No, it wasn't his libido that missed her. It was…
…the way firelight flickered over her skin as she danced with the unworthy bastards that felt the bite of her spear
…that small snort of amusement when he made sarcastic quips as they fought
…the gleam in those green, green eyes while watching the captives step out of their cages and taste freedom, some for the first time in months
…the way she never tried to change him
…the way she rose to every challenge he set, blew past every dare with that easy grace she approached everything.
Of course it had started with the physical. Despite what others believed - what he himself had been trained to believe - he was nothing but human when it came down to it. And he would dare anyone to watch her casually deliberate viciousness and not be stirred to arousal at the sight. His mistake, his flaw, was believing it was only physical.
It was so much more than that. And he could admit it now, here, in the chill, pure silence. Admit that she had meant something. That those moments they had shared, that her kindness and her acceptance had done more to his very sense of being than he could have even imagined. Sitting at the campfire with her, sharing casual snippets of conversation - had anyone ever just talked to him? Not since he’d been dragged into the battles - too young, he’d known it even then, far too young, but it wasn’t as though he’d had the opportunity to protest. Even if he had objected, it would have been for naught. In the eyes of…his father, the king, the war…he was a tool. A weapon. And weapons don’t have free thought.
He took a moment to reminisce. His childhood - such that it was - had started out…he supposed normal, by some standards. He had few memories of his very young years. Head been one of a dozen or so children, concubinal offspring, communally raised in the imperial harem complex. He had no real remembrance of the woman who had borne him, nothing beyond a faint memory of sweet orange blossom and dark blue eyes. He could recall more about the other children, the varied ages still never more than a handful of years apart. He remembered the first time someone had been kind to him - a small boy, about his own age, similar skin shade, golden brown eyes, a piece of candy held on an open palm. It had been surprising to him at the time; though he was of an age with the others they’d never truly brought him into their games or studies. But here was this boy, and even as young as he had been Nil was aware of the social difference between the two of them - bastard or no, Avad was a Prince of the Sundom and he himself was…not. And the young prince was proffering a piece of honeysuckle taffy with a smile as bright as the Sun they all worshiped.
“Here! I saw they didn’t offer you a piece when they brought the basket of sweets out, so I got one for you!”
Nil leaned forward and stirred the fire a little, teasing a small flame out of the slowly dying coals even as the melancholy memory made him smile. His first friend - his only friend, really, in those carefree early years when he was permitted to have such luxuries. With Avad had come Kadaman and Fashav; the first, all too aware of his position as heir to the Sun Throne (and though Nil hadn’t known it then, also too aware of Nil’s own paternity), reluctant to be more than stiltingly polite, the second mischievous and playful and easily accepting of the sudden addition to the royal dynamic that had been dragged into their circle by Jiran’s precocious younger offspring.
It was…fun, he remembered. The four had games they invented, stories they told. Like all children raised in war, they played at grand fights and flawless victories over their foes. Sticks made passable swords, and with Avad’s urging (because no one could resist his shining smile and giggles, not the adults, not the other children) they began to integrate others into their mock battles. Nil chuckled, staring at the fire. Those had been fun times. Sweet times.
Short times. Too short.
He wondered much, when it all began, if perhaps it was their play fighting that had brought him to his - Helis’ attention. Even now he refused to consider that monster his father - and for a monster such as he himself was, that was saying something. It had been bittersweet hearing of the man’s death - a sweet relief knowing that the man that had spawned him no longer cursed the earth with his very existence, a bitter burn because he had wanted to be the one to watch as the tainted blood flowed from the man’s veins, to watch the light fade from eyes that even now haunted his darkest nightmares.
But was it that? His skill in their games, his willingness to follow the orders his ‘commander’ gave, his proficiency in taking down his opponents? Was that what caused the man himself to show up that fateful day, to summon him by name, to command him to follow? Nil remembered looking back, knowing his terror was visible to all, to see his friends staring at him with mixed expressions - Avad’s fear as easily visible as his own; Fashav was apprehensive, worried. And Kadaman…Kadaman had been resigned. Sorrowful.
It had been the last time he had seen any of them until he was sent to the West. And the person that was assigned to Unyielding Fashav’s company was such a far cry from the boy that had at one point enjoyed piggyback rides from the now-General that neither of them even attempted to speak beyond official business. Fashav looked at him sometimes, though, a sad and wistful light in his eyes, before returning to being the commanding officer he was expected to be, every hint of the playful child buried and burned by the machine of war.
Nil had never reciprocated. His was not an existence that permitted kindness. Friendship. He’d learned that lesson hard and well. He always had been an exceptional student.
He was a weapon. And weapons did not feel.
The fire had cooled to coals, the flurries had well and truly begun, and he could see the white flakes on his eyelashes when he blinked. With a slow exhale he stood, making his way to his tent and bedroll. Yet though he lay there, warm and safe, the night quiet and serene, sleep still would not come. Between memories of his youth and the blaze of green eyes and red hair, he knew he was unlikely to find rest that night.
He wondered if he would ever see her again.
He feared that he would. He feared that he wouldn’t. And for the first time, Nil was not sure what he feared more.