#cfha

Nyx had taken out a handful before they were able to subdue him— before the tech was turned on and whatever connection he had to the Lucian magic was dulled. Before he was pushed to his knees in front of a man he had recognised from his own village— his own hometown. Before he was knocked down to the floor of a warehouse he couldn’t identify and four men were needed to hold him in place while the leader of this little resistance to the Lucian royals made his approach.

“You know,” the man— Ulv, Nyx remembered— started; “I remember when you were just a damned brat, Ulric. Thinking you ran the town.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

“Yeah, I really do, you fucking lapdog.”

Nyx didn’t register the knife until he felt the sting of the blade of his cheek. He didn’t register the tug in his hair until the pressure was released. He didn’t register it until he saw the braids in Ulv’s hand, the black and blue beads falling loose. Until he saw the little black cord that Noct had woven into the braid fall to the dust at another Galahdian’s boots.

He thought— back in the forests of Galahd, on the battlefields, in the chaos of trenches and warfare— he would have fought back. He would have raged and railed against the loss. Stopped it before it got this far— forced them to kill him before they did this. But all he could feel was the trickle of blood down his cheek and the four pairs of hands pressing down on him. All he could hear were the empty words he and Libertus used to say to each other about this very scenario— they had both agreed: death before dishonour.

All he could feel was the acute loss as the beads rolled to a stop.

“Get the whelp.”

Nyx did struggle then, tried to push the traitors away, to break free as Noctis was pulled forward roughly, dragged out like a damned spoil rather than a prisoner of value. To get to Noct as the prince was thrown down to the concrete floor. Nyx saw the fury on the prince’s face, the pain that stiffened his back as it shot from knee to old wound.

“If you touch him—”

Nyx could only start the threat before there was a knife hilt connecting with the side of his head. He barely registered the string of similar threats falling from Noctis’ mouth before his eyes cleared enough to see Ulv gripping Noct’s hair— tugging the braids that had been redone just that morning. Tugging at every promise kissed into the weaving, every Galahdian spell and kid word drawn from his heart through his lips and hands, until Noct was swearing through the rough treatment and fear and pain those promises were causing.

He saw blood on Noct’s face. He heard the beads— his beads— scatter as they fell. He saw his braids dropped to the floor— Noct’s desecrated hair cast aside like it was nothing.

“No!” Nyx didn’t care how out-numbered he was— how this had come from such a simple escort— how stunned he was. All he could see was blood on Noct’s face, and his claim, his honour, abandoned like it was nothing to people he used to know. People who knew who he was, his family. All he could see was the pain and shock in Noct.

He practically roared as he pushed up against those holding him down. Against the threats of knives and guns. They should have bound his hands.

They shouldn’t have touched Noctis.  

Gunfire shattered the warehouse before Nyx could move. Nyx’s priority changed from killing the bastards that had done this to protecting Noct as much as he could now— covering the prince with his own body in the chaos. He heard the bodies drop around him, saw the shine of Crownsguard armour, saw the fear and shock in Noct’s eyes.