Gee...I wonder

for your consideration: "game changer" and "very important people" in 11 emmy categories.

And he always has his red watch and red lined converse !

Fated for the petrova like since the beginning

I think this idea may have come up before, but this is my personal iteration on the theory and what might have caused Nightingale's immortality. I have a lot to say on this so I'm just going to work through all the things we know about Nightingale and the RoL universe and why I think it supports this theory. Strap in.

Evidence #1: Nightingale is stuck at 40

The big questions here are a) why did he start ageing backwards in the 60s and b) why did he stop at 40.

I think most people agree that this is related to war somehow, and my theory is linked with:

Evidence #2: The form immortals take is psychosomatic

We know this from the story Lady Ty tells Peter. She is immortal, but she appears to age normally with the rest of her family because it feels right. When she goes on holiday and starts to feel young again, she ages backwards to 20 or so. Therefore, we can conclude that the form an immortal takes is controlled by their subconscious.

So what if it was the same for Nightingale?

My theory: He became immortal but didn't realise. So he aged normally because he expected to, it felt right. The magic was fading, the world around him was changing all the time and he felt increasingly old so he continues ageing into the 60s.

So why did he start ageing backwards?

I think it could be that on a subconscious level, he wanted to be young again. Your 60s is usually when your health and physically mobility start to deteriorate. With all the stairs and very much not accessibility friendly design of the folly, he would have been very aware of his decline.

My head cannon is that he slipped in the bath and hurt his hip or something so Molly had to help him. The combination embarrassment and crushing realisation that he really was that old must have kick-started something and he began to age backwards. Essentially he just didn't want to be old anymore and this caused a subconscious shift which resulted in his de-ageing.

This is also when the magic started to return. We know that he saw himself as a bit of a relic, just holding down the fort as the magic dwindled away. But what if when the magic started to come back, on a subconscious level, he felt like might still be needed?

Then there's this thing in psychology about trauma being stored in the body and that the body remembers trauma in a complex way we still don't quite understand. So maybe Nightingale gets stuck at 40 because thats where his mind body are stuck psychologically, back in the war.

Okay, but how did he become immortal in the first place?

Evidence #3: Immortal beings like genii locorum can passively absorb magic from their surroundings

We know this is the basis for the power behind the rivers, but what if this principle could work with other sources of power?

Evidence #4: Magical energy is released upon death and can be used by wizards for spells etc.

Nightingale mentions in book 1 that some older rituals call for animal sacrifice to provide a source of energy for the spell. This is also how we get demon traps. The trap is a battery that holds the angry spirit/magical energy until triggered.

What if Nightingale unknowingly became a battery?

Evidence #5: Immortality can be achieved via human sacrifice

It's been awhile since I've read Lies Sleeping (I think that's the book where this happened but I could be wrong) but in it, we learn about the origins of Punch.

Essentially there was a mass death/suicide thing with chanting and magic and Punch, at near death, absorbed the magic released upon the deaths of the others. This is what caused him to become a revenant/god or spirit of riot and rebellion.

This is arguably also what happened to Simone and her sisters in Moon over Soho. They were doing magic (making shapes in their minds) in a jazz club when a bomb hit and everyone died. Huge release of magical energy that they somehow they managed to absorb and so survived.

Evidence #6: Magic happens in the brain

At the point of death, your brain does a lot of last ditch stuff to try and keep you alive/not panic i.e. dumping all the neurochemicals so you start hallucinating about heaven and other stuff.

We know the brain is a practitioner's source of magic because of hypothermatological degradation.

What if, at the point of death, a practitioners brain starts scrambling to save itself and starts absorbing magic from its surroundings like the genii lorcorum.

Evidence #8: Wizards can absorb magic from their surroundings, i.e staffs

We know it's possible for wizards to absorb magic from external source because that's how staffs work. Staffs help keep a practitioner from destroying their brain by providing an external reserve of magic that the wizard can draw on when needed. I think this principle may also be linked to why electronics get fried by magic, but I can't quite remember the exact explanation for that given in the books so maybe not.

Either way, we know wizards are able to draw on the magic around them.

Evidence #7: The human body cannot be manipulated by magic unless it is injuried or near death

I think this is also in Lies Sleeping when Caroline is explaining how her healing magic works. From what I remember, the reason magic can work on wounds is because the wound represents a weak point in the body's defences in the same way a cut is vulnerable to bacterial infection/foreign invasion.

Evidence #8: To conquer death, you have to die (or come close)

Mama Thames says that she became a goddess when she threw herself into the river. She said that the river wasn't 'asking for anything that she wasn't already willing to give' i.e. her life.

Punch also died in the process of becoming a god/spirit.

What if something about being in a near death/recently dead state allows the magic to penetrate your cells/natural defences. What if it can then alter you to the point that you become something else?

Conclusion: Nightingale died or nearly died at some point during the war. His brain began to absorb the magical energy being released by those dying around him. This huge amount of magic altered his injured body, making him immortal. He didn't realise this happened as battlefields are pretty chaotic, particularly during WWII. So he aged normally until a change in his subconscious caused him to age backwards to the point where his mind and body were psychologically stuck.

Because the source of his immortality was the death of other soldiers/the magic of the battlefield, this would make him genii bellum i.e. a God of War.

We know this sort of thing is possible because of Oberon and the other 'Old Soldiers'. But I do think Nightingale is different somehow. It could be the sheer volume of death during WWII was so much higher than other wars and so he absorbed a lot more magic. Also it could depend on whether died died or just came close to death.

Also I think if Nightingale ever came to this conclusion he would be absolutely horrified and probably take a vow of pacificism or something. It's hinted at throughout the series that he has pretty bad survivors guilt and idea that he only survived because he absorbed the magic released by his dead friends probably would not help with that.

All of this could be applied to Vavara as well and I personally think she is also a God of War.

Grace who does jazz hands and taps when he's asking a question and says some words three times like Rocky. Grace who makes chirps and trilling noises when he's happy.

Grace who starts thinking and dreaming in Eridian, who sometimes has dreams that are just sound, no visual. (Grace who, if he ever goes back to Earth for whatever reason after years on Erid, forgets some words in English and speaks in the sentence structure of Eridian because he has to translate from Eridian to English when he speaks outloud).

Grace who does scarification (even if Rocky protests at first) - I've read some fics where he does the Voyager pulsar map, or dots and lines showing his route from Sol, to Tau Ceti, turning around towards Sol, and then the line going all the way back to Erid. Even though he already has the scars from Rocky saving him, maybe Rocky's family crest. A scar showing his rank as Captain of the Hail Mary - maybe something to represent her, too.

Grace who wears Eridian gems, as earrings, in a chain for his glasses, in strings draped over him that clink together when he walks - the most important ones, like the earrings he wears all the time, the color of the blueish-green gems (or spots?) in/on Rocky's carapace.

Grace who wears a bracelet on each arm that have ribbed marks like on Rocky's arm so he can properly say goodbye (not something he had to do, but something that felt right to do, something that made him feel more like himself), sound included.

he speaks quieter, using sound cues a lot that dont particularly make sense to any normal human. most eridians who spend a lot of time with him have developed these sound cues as well, which is definitely strange. since grace cant make all the sounds they can make i like to think he has a sorta like.. sound board? not one he uses a lot but if hes talking to a not well known eridian hell use it to indicate tone and other things like that when necessary, he likes to use it while teaching cuz he doesnt want to have kids growing up and talking weird from the get go (they usually do anyways)

They’re best friends but by both Earth and Eridian standards everyone is like “Oh wow, they’re… close-”

Like little to no cares about privacy around each other because, well, fuck you aren’t getting much of that on a spaceship for multiple years now are you?

Wherever one goes there’s a 50% chance the other will be there too.

Whenever Grace talks to another Eridian he uses some sort of portable instrument to communicate but with Rocky they just speak in two separate languages at each other. It’s like seeing someone speak to someone in only Chinese and the other person only responds back in English.

Would be funny if Eridians aren’t very touchy but Rocky is basically clingy as fuck when it comes to Grace. Always tugging on his pants like a toddler to get his attention and stuff.

Grace just using Rocky in either his ball, enclosure or his xenonite suit as a backrest while he’s grading or doing work or something, Rocky fully absorbed in his own thing. Sitting as close together as physically possible while having zero interaction with each other. Parallel play at it’s best.

These two come in a pair. Do not separate.

All of this and more, fully platonically, people wonder if they’re the world’s first weird inter solar system couple and if they’re in some weird polycule with Adrian but no, they’re just like that.

It’s just Rocky and the human he adopted as a permanent part of his family that he will spend every possible second of the rest of his short life with because he won’t be here forever and he’s not going to waste any of his time for the world.