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he’s always tried to be a good kid. most of the time, he has succeeded. ninos knight is pious, patriotic, raised a paramount of his specimen. he is a perfect prodigy, he is pathetic.[break][break]

the first time he run away, he is six and a half. he gets as far as the main door before a gentleman stops him, a hand firm on his shoulder. it is easy to catch him, then, because he runs like a terrified animal, the white of his eyes bone-bright and too much false pride held in the slope of his shoulders to commit to the act. he is returned to his parents, who accept him graciously, even though he’s mischievous and ah, well, you know how kids are these days.[break][break]

the punishment comes after, when no one is looking, a hiss of a reprimand and sharp glass across his cheek. and, because he’s a good kid, he doesn’t complain. when you’re someone like the knights, this is written off as the mere fallibility of man, and no one else comments. not even when he shows up later in the week at a company dinner with bruises burning deep purple hollows in his skin. climbing a tree, his parents laugh, you know how kids are these days.[break][break]

the first time he meets laurent borchardt, he is seven and three quarters, standing at the corner of a banquet hall wringing his hands behind his back. laurent is the only other child there, or the only other one he can stand; laurent, with his sun-spun golden hair and soft words. he is calm, that day, for the first time in a long time.[break][break]

they meet again and again after that, the same people circulating in the same circles. it’s the same dinners every time, the same type of thinly veiled knife-sharp chatter, but they stay out on the balcony and watch the stars. they find different constellations every time.[break][break]

ramel comes back when ninos is ten. he has only ever heard of his brother in proud tales his parents have told; he tries, desperately, to live up to this phantom sibling who has somehow done everything perfectly, flawlessly; he hopes, fervently, that ramel is nothing like their parents. and for what it’s worth, he isn’t. he remembers how ramel had been worried when he arrived, how he had found ninos later that night and pressed an amulet into his palm. they promise each other to escape as soon as they can, swearing by the stars and their still-beating hearts.[break][break]

ninos promises laurent, too, that things will get better. as far as he knows, he promises eternity.[break][break]

these are things that keeps him going for a good while longer. he gets better at running away, sneaks out to see laurent and watch the stars. he never quite commits. he always comes back in the end, if only to make sure his brother still breathes, if only to make sure his parents do not find a new target.[break][break]

he is twelve when he first learns to dance. the cold bites at his heels and he can’t feel his hands, but his brother is flying across the ice, carving lions out of frost and trailing stars in his wake. he stumbles out onto the ice accompanied by a wolf twice his size, a creature of his shadow and soul. they are specks of dust on a flawless mirror, graveyard dust under a goddess’ fingernails, but they are dancing anyway.[break][break]

and, because fighting is simply another type of dancing, his brother teaches him that beauty is but the beginning of terror, and teaches him how to wield a sword. ramel teaches him the art of transfiguration, tells him, your dance is your reality and this is how you shape it. ramel teaches him to strike only twice: the first sets fear into the hearts of his enemies; the second silences it.[break][break]

in winter he dances on ice; come spring and summer ninos moves indoors, swings from aerial silks and pretends he can fly. when he turns fifteen he takes up acting as well -- goes for countless auditions and builds up a spine of porcelain bravado and supernova-bright wicked smiles. he lands a role in a theatre downtown, as a young rogue whose penchant for bad luck lands him in countless little adventures. then some years after, he’s seventeen when he plays the role of a starry-eyed soldier who saves his city. he plays the hero often, because apparently he’s just got ‘that type of face’. he laughs, tells them they’ve never seen his brother, then.[break][break]

fate is slippery and it is just an accident that costs him his legs. they are racing through the woods at a breakneck gallop and he remembers thinking, this is as close to flying as i will get. he doesn’t remember falling in so much as he remembers the screaming. he remembers waking up to his brother crying, to ramel whispering i can fix this. he remembers the pain, lancing up his spine as his brother twists and reshapes the reality of a broken body as he sees fit.[break][break]

some weeks later and he can stand again. stands, through his parents’ screaming. walks, even if it is through a haze of pain. dances again, even when the pain gets too great and he wants to die. but he doesn’t; he is living, breathing, alive-[break][break]

and the good die young, he’s aware, because come eighteen, ramel knight is dead at twenty-two, having scarcely lived a third of his life. he watches his brother’s body be taken away, spins on his heel and screams at his parents, this is your fault. [break][break]

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and he knows it’s been coming, because of course they aren’t happy about what he’s been doing, making a name for himself, dancing and acting and venturing further and further from the blueprint of whatever damned version of success they have set out for him. it should have been me. he is born with his life set in the stars above him, his path a narrow thorn-lined road; he has grave dirt in his blood and he thinks that maybe, if he can shatter himself into a million microscopic pieces and piece himself together again, then maybe-[break][break]

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he steals a horse from the family stables and enlists in the militia the very next day. gets in, because no one really cares about a common face in a common militia. goes straight to whatever promises the heaviest action, for whatever role will take him as far away from this godforsaken place, whatever role will land him in the thick of the fighting, whatever that may be. shrugs off his body and drops it lifeless on the cold linoleum floor when he signs over his soul on the recruitment papers. says, take it, i don’t want it anymore.[break][break]

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then he is a soldier free-falling into border-skirmishes and raids against monsters, without a home nor family to call his own, with only an instinct to ruin. he is: unbridled, slashed tires and unanswered voicemails. burning at his own stake. there are tears echoing in an empty room. unmoored, unrepentant, playing a self-destructive god in a recurring nightmare.[break][break]

he is a series of carefully curated answers for every assessment, because he can’t tell anyone i want to die because that’s just the type of thing that makes them worry. and it’s not really accurate, per se. but if a carriage skidded off the road and came hurtling towards him, he wouldn’t hurry to get out of the way, see? if the world exploded around him, he wouldn’t rush his escape; the flames are pretty, he thinks, and he has burned himself trying to touch them more than once.[break][break]

he doesn’t want them to worry because to worry is to get himself kicked off the team, just not in so many words. they’d do it more eloquently, and with more paperwork. and he doesn’t know what he’d do with himself if they do, so he shuts up and stays a good soldier. [break][break]

he’s a good soldier, reckless and violent and effective and god knows where he’s got this instinct from, but he starts to hold himself like he holds a weapon, cautious and with intent, dagger fragments lodged somewhere in his chest. [break][break]

a few things that make his life better: he makes a few friends in the town where he is stationed, he thinks he likes them. he keeps the horse, a mare irritable but talented. names the horse campina. he hopes the horse likes him. he learns to fight better alongside his familiar. learns to switch between a shortbow and a sword as easily as one may breathe, learns to coordinate each attack with the mottled wolf that darts in and out of the shadows.[break][break]

a few things that makes it worse: the pain, though he gets used to that eventually. the constant questions, aren’t you a witch? aren’t you a transfigurer? how come we’ve never seen you use magic to fight? he doesn’t know how to answer these without baring his soul, without telling these soldiers who trust him to lead that he is nothing but a coward running from his past. like he’s some kind of protagonist in a dramatic play except this one doesn’t get a happy ending. reality has no grasp on a talented transfigurer, but look how that helped ramel. absolutely fucking nothing.[break][break]

he takes up alchemy instead. at least that helps with the pain.[break][break]

the world ends slowly for ninos knight, because he has long since come to terms that his entire pathetic life will be a dirge, adagio. it starts with an assassin who finds where he’s been hiding, an assassin through whom the family sends its regards. he kills this one. it continues with another assassin, one too young and burning too bright. he helps this one, not knowing why.[break][break]

the world ends slowly, systole - diastole, it breathes and is remade.[break][break]

( ask him later why he does it. he’ll say, for my sins. )[break][break]

these are the things that happen in rapid succession after he leaves eclipse: he leaves the militia as a decorated lieutenant. he doubles down on his study on alchemy and takes up a job at lux university in sundial as a teaching assistant. he applies for a familiar size constraint to make miro less intimidating. shoves the uniform into the back of his closet and laughs it off when anyone asks if he’s part of the helios knights. ( oh, please, they have standards to uphold. they’re not going to accept me. )[break][break]

these are the things that continue to happen: he learns to craft a potion that dulls the pain. he relies on this heavily, knows his body will one day shatter and maybe he ought to look into more viable solutions. he walks on anyway. he brings his horse with him and somehow wrangles out accommodation even in sundial. there is an itch beneath his skin he cannot scratch, a guilt that sinks its claws into him every time he closes his eyes. but he lives, or rather, he does not die.[break][break]

only the good die young, he’s aware.