a/n: Arthur and Nyx have like. the purest supports in the whole game they're so good and cute and fun. i love them so much because Arthur made Nyx laugh and she was happy and she wasn't getting down on herself when she was around him and it was so! good! i'd really suggest going to youtube or something and watching the supports before you read this, since i allude to them a few times- the very first part is basically a rewrite of their a-support.
in any case, this is basically trash i wrote it like two weeks ago when i was bored and now i can't stop staring at it and overthinking the editing so i just had to throw it out there and get it away from me!
The first time Arthur realizes he is in love with the fair Nyx, the mysterious and stoic young sorceress who can level entire battalions of Vallite soldiers with a flick of her wrist and a few pretty words, happens when he doesn't expect it.
He immediately seeks her out the day after the dinner party with the Hoshidans that he'd had the wonderful pleasure of escorting his lady Elise to. His head is still pounding with a hangover, an entirely unpleasant feeling, and he crosses his arms and has to pause to wonder why people drink for fun. It's baffling to him, alcohol burns and stings, but it's not the matter at hand, so he brushes it aside.
He finds the seer sitting against a rock with a stack of books next to her, and the light reflects on her night-colored hair just right so that she has the appearance of a very small, very unusually-colored angel. He walks up to her, hovering a polite distance away until she looks up and notices him.
"Arthur," she says, and her voice is warm compared with the chill in the Vallan air.
"You were quite right about the dinner party, fair Nyx," he tells her.
Her eyebrows raise and, though he can't see her lower face behind her veil, he imagines there's something like a smile there. Her cheekbones are squished in that way they do when people smile, and there's a friendly glint to her eye. She scoots over, revealing a patch of plush green grass, and pats the space next to her. Arthur lowers himself next to her, sighing and resting his head against the rock. His head is still pounding and he grimaces.
"Poor dear." He likes the way she talks like an older woman, but it reminds him that he can't exactly pin down her age. Her appearance suggests she's barely any older than his lady, but she speaks like an old soul and has a look in her eyes that he's only seen in the old and wise.
In any case, Arthur really enjoys it when she calls him "dear" in that voice.
"Do tell me what happened," she presses. Her book is closed and pressed against her knees- he has her full attention. "I'm interested in the details."
So he tells her the story about the makeshift party with the Hoshidan royals, as good a party as they can toss together during their brief rest on the march to the castle. He talks about being served the alcohol- his head aches when he mentions it- and how he knocked it back in just one go before realizing what it was. Her cheeks squish again when he slows down his storytelling, and she urges him on to the next part.
"What I had wasn't a breadstick, but Lady Elise's hair."
Her eyes round out from their usual sharpness, and she presses her fingers against her veil as though it is her lips. "I-I can see how anyone could mistake those cute tails of hers for baguettes," she mumbles. There's a tremor to her shoulders. "Especially under the influence of spirits."
She turns away from him, her shoulders shaking, and he reaches out. She's behaving incredibly oddly. "Nyx?"
The moment his fingers hover over her shoulder, she bursts out laughing, her arms wound around her stomach. She's so overcome with mirth that she has to lean back against the rock, heaving with every new peal of laughter that ravages her.
Nyx. Laughing.
He notices every tiny detail about her then, for no particular reason, things he didn't notice before. The tears pricking the corners of her eyes, how long and gentle her fingers look as they dig into her sides. He notices that she's barefoot and that the way her toes curl up is completely adorable, that her hair is the color of the deepest, darkest night. He even notices the shape of her nose, and he admires it until she turns away again.
He doesn't know what he should say, or if he should say anything, and what falls out of his mouth is a stupid sound: "Er…"
She stops laughing suddenly and puts a hand on her chest, clearing her throat as she composes herself. Her cheeks are bright pink. "F-forgive me. I shouldn't make light of your suffering, Arthur."
His face hangs slack for a moment, and she looks at him with a tilt to her head and a perplexed expression. He struggles to come up with something, suddenly very eager to appear anything but an idiot in her presence, and smiles. "No, it's quite all right. I hadn't thought about it until you laughed, but it is a knee-slapper of a tale, isn't it?"
"I…" Her brow furrows and she glances down before her eyes have that smiling look again. "Suppose? I'll admit, I've come to enjoy peering into your future, Arthur. There's never a want of bizarre trouble to be found there."
The look on his face is slack-jawed and stupid, he knows, but he's intensely drawn in by the deep brown of her eyes and struggles to get anything out of his mouth, which is suddenly incredibly dry. "Alas, it's true. But I can bear anything so long as you laugh away my bad luck, as you just did."
Her hand brushes over the book in her lap and she picks it back up, flitting through the pages. "I think you can rely on me for that much, sir."
That was the first time he realized he was hopelessly in love with her.
The second time comes not long after the war, with all three nations settled and struggling under the aftereffects of the long-standing feud. Elise has become as attached to Nyx as Arthur has (though he is much more quiet about his affections, he notes as the princess clings to the sorceress) and is crying as her new friend packs her meager possessions into a bag and makes for the castle's door.
"Why?" his princess demands. "Why are you leaving, Nyx?"
The sorceress tilts her head, as he has come to notice that she often does. "The war is over. I have no place in the Nohrian army now that all is said and done."
"Where are you going to go?"
Nyx shrugs and shoulders her bag. Her traveling cloak looks scant and thin, and Arthur knows the long Nohrian winter is coming. There's a part of him that wants to give her the clothes off his back to keep her warm, but he hopes it doesn't come to that. He hopes that she stays, even though he doesn't know why she would. After all, she'd travelled to Notre Sagesse and climbed a perilous, life-threatening mountain for the sole purpose of solitude.
He doesn't understand that. People are so kind and incredible, and he can't fathom why she wants to avoid them.
"Perhaps I'll go to Valla," she says suddenly. "It's quiet there, for now. I'm sure I can find somewhere to hide."
"Stay here!" Elise presses.
"You should stay," Arthur adds in, unprompted and awkwardly.
Nyx fixes him with her eyes and, again, he can't quite tell what she's expressing underneath that clunky veil of hers. "I have nothing here."
"You have nothing in Valla," he argues, and she squirms under the weight of his point.
"You could have something here." King Xander appears behind his sister, almost out of thin air, and he looks exhausted under the weight of his new crown.
"Xander!" Elise grasps at his heavy cloak. "Make her stay. You're king now, so make her."
Arthur watches as Nyx sighs and ducks her head to Xander, acknowledging his presence, as is polite. With a surge of mortification, he realizes he hasn't bowed, and as he takes the slightest step forward to lean into one, his foot catches on a loose stone in the ground and he stumbles. Xander catches the back of his collar effortlessly, without even looking at him, and pulls him back up.
"Your experience as a mage is invaluable, Nyx," the prince tells her. "Besides your magic, you displayed incredible prowess in herbalism and prophesying during wartime. Perhaps the army isn't for you, but I'm sure there's something else here that could help you bide your time."
And so, to Elise (and Arthur's) sheer delight, Xander makes her a court herbalist and general consultant. He thinks Nyx is pleased as well, but he simply can't tell. The way she walks around the castle, with her back straight and her head raised, tells him that she is not not pleased, but he's just not sure.
Elise fakes agony every day after the sorceress gets settled into her new position, claiming Nyx is the only one who can cure her. One day, it her aching head- it's simply splitting in two! The next finds her with just the worst pain in her legs, another has her with over-exaggerated and "excruciating" chills, and another day, she has an intense pain in her stomach.
Actually, that last one is unpleasantly real- she'd stuffed herself much too full of cake the previous night at Effie's birthday celebration, and Arthur sighs and holds her hair back as she retches all morning long. While he carries her on his back to the infirmary, he scolds her lightly for eating far too much, and she pulls on his hair and complains that he's treating her like a child, which she is, but he likes when his hair isn't being pulled and when his lady is happy, so he doesn't say anything else about it.
"Well, now what do we have here?" The head herbalist, a willowy woman, meets them at the door, her hands shoved in her coat's pockets and an amused look on her face. "Come to see us again, little princess?"
"She's actually sick today," Arthur explains.
"I was sick all the other days, too," Elise insists, and then she slaps a hand over her mouth and turns a bit green.
"Come here." The doctor takes her from Arthur easily, carrying her inside to a plush bed that is already prepared for her. "Too much cake?"
"It was so good," Elise moans.
The woman smiles and walks to a desk, arranging bottles and bowls there, and Arthur looks around the room. There isn't a single hint of midnight hair or a veil, or her long, talented fingers, and he asks, "Where's the fair Nyx?"
Elise turns her head to her doctor as well. "Yeah, I want Nyx to treat me!"
After sniffing at the contents of a bottle, the doctor dumps it into a bowl. The sour smell wafts through the room, and he's surprised that his lady doesn't heave again right then and there. "Oh, she's in the next room over. It's her break time right now, and she's working on some spare project." She regards Arthur as she looks over her shoulder, a bit of a knowing look in her eyes, and he turns a very hot, very deep red. "I'm sure she wouldn't object if you poked your head in to say hello to her. If I'm reading her right, she rather enjoys the company of you two, and that of Miss Effie as well."
Elise dismisses him with a fatigued wave of her hand, and she looks pitiful enough that he's almost reluctant to leave her. The princess is his charge, his entire life. Then again, she's suffered worse than a bad stomachache, and he doesn't get to see the fair Nyx as often as he did back when she was in the army, so he opens the door across the room and looks inside.
Sure enough, just the sight of her wild black hair turns his stomach into knots. Her back is to him, and she's scribbling away at a paper while she reads from a book. A collection of bottles and flowers are at her other side, and she doesn't seem to notice him at all. He clears his throat to announce himself, takes a step forward-
-and falls flat on his face, just at the edge of her chair.
For no reason at all.
Nyx jumps and looks down at him, and he looks up at her, struggling to smile. There's something hot on his face. "Fair Nyx! Wonderful to see you this fine day."
"Arthur!" She pushes back her chair and leans over him as he struggles to get on his knees. "Are you alright? Gods, your nose is bleeding."
It's then that he notices that her veil is not there, and he sees the shimmering fabric scrunched in a ball at the edge of the table. He's never seen the whole of her face before, the fullness of her lips and delicate curve of her jawline, and it's such a riveting thing to see all of the fair Nyx that he doesn't respond to her or try to stop his own bleeding.
Her hand reaches out and her fingers brush right below his nose, and when she pulls away, there's certainly a sizable amount of red on her fingers. He starts and wants to apologize for making a mess, but she reaches into the pocket of her pure white herbalist's uniform and pulls out a black handkerchief. She kneels on the floor across from him and presses it against his face, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she mops up what she can. Her touch is delicate and soothing, and he wants her hand to stay there forever, but that kind of notion is selfish and, thusly, totally unheroic.
"What brings you here?" she asks.
"Milady ate too much at Effie's celebration last night," he explains.
Nyx does that little humming thing that he loves, where she goes "hmmhm." It's an adorable, amused sound, a completely endearing quirk. "The food was delicious. I'd expect no less from Effie's party. Who can blame the princess for overstuffing herself?"
She finally pulls away and tucks her handkerchief back into her pocket. The blood has stopped gushing out of his nose, and he kind of wishes it had kept going. The feel of her hand is divine, and he feels uneasy without it. She sits back in her chair and leans over her book again, and Arthur stands to look over her shoulder.
"What are you doing?" he asks.
"Well, I was making something for you, actually" she responds. Her quill taps against the surface of her notes, and he can't make head-or-tails from them.
"M-me?" he echoes. His head feels light and, with his luck, he thinks he might fall over again. "What-?"
"I was thinking when you fell in front of King Xander the other day," she starts, "that a charm might help you. I would've made you one when we were fighting the war, but I didn't have sufficient materials then. I had Orochi from Hoshido send me the ingredients I need, and I've been working on putting together a good luck charm since I got them."
He stares, taking in the sight of her with her hair pulled back into a bushy tail at the nape of her neck, the set of thin frames at the edge of her nose that make her look much more mature, her fingers hovering over a gift that is meant for him, and his heart swells with adoration. She's completely lovely, and he tries to tell her so, stammering through it, but Elise comes running in and throws her arms around Nyx, back to herself and squealing.
The charm, potent as it is, doesn't work all that well, but he does find his balance improved, he tells her. Only a second after, he leans against a railing that apparently is having all its screws replaced and falls from the second story of the castle into, luckily and unluckily, a plush rose bush filled to the brim with springy leaves and thorns.
As she pulls a thorn out of his cheek and scolds him for not being careful, he realizes for the second time that he's maddeningly in love with her.
The third time, it's on a visit to Valla that he accompanies Lady Elise and Lady Camilla on. Corrin had requested that her sisters bring Nyx along with them to see if she couldn't help organize the old, dusty tomes she'd found in the castle's long-forgotten basement library.
The new queen bites her lip as she holds open the door to the library. "I was told by the servants that Anankos killed all the librarians. I'm sure there are other people scattered around who could help, but you were on your way already, so-"
Coughing fills the room, and Arthur looks down at Elise. Her hands are on an exceptionally old script, and a heavy cloud of dust is drifting around her. Effie gasps and waves the dust away and digs around her trousers for something to offer her lady.
"There's too much dust in here," the princess complains. Her voice is muffled as Effie presses a handkerchief against her face. "I don't want Nyx in this dirty room!"
Corrin sighs and slumps her shoulders, looking even more exhausted than King Xander. "It's only been a few months now, Elise. All of my attention is too focused on restoring the land, so cleaning out the castle hasn't been on my mind."
Nyx speaks up suddenly, while she pulls book after book from the shelves. "It's fine. I've dealt with worse than a dusty room before, princess, but your concern touches me." She pulls another load of books off the shelves, and Arthur steps forward to help as the stack tips precariously.
"Allow me," he says. He takes half the books into his arms and she sighs with relief.
"You can bring those into the drawing room," Corrin tells them. "Camilla's already waiting for us there. You can look through those while we have something to eat."
Arthur sits next to Nyx while she flips through page after page, admiring the way her nose scrunches a little when she's confused, or how she mouths words to herself and draws her fingers under the lines. He attempts a look at the pages, but what he finds may as well be gibberish. It gives him a headache and he looks away. She rests a hand on his shoulder and gives a hint of a smile.
"They're hard," she reassures him. "Even I'm having some trouble understanding. I haven't seen texts like these in some time."
"Valla appears to have quite the history," Lady Camilla says. She sits by a table in a plush chair, her legs perfectly crossed and a sweet smile on her lips. "But I'm shocked that it's stumping even you, sweet girl."
Nyx presses her lips and glowers a little at the princess. "Milady, please do not call me 'girl.'"
Camilla smiles more and looks away, back at the fireplace where Elise and Effie are playing a card game together. "My apologies. What do you prefer?"
She brushes a long strand of hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear, and Arthur admires the elegant way her fingers move in such a simple action. "Just Nyx, milady."
"Just Nyx," Camilla repeats. "Nyx is a very unusual name, don't you know?"
Nyx hums and closes her book, motions for Arthur to pass her the next. "Is it really?"
"I recall my tutors telling me once that there was an ancient deity of the same name- the goddess of the night, apparently. The mother of darkness, death, sleep, deceit, and strife, along with countless other things." The princess crosses the room to them and rests her fingers on top of the sorceress' head. "They said even the king of the gods feared her for her beauty and power."
"Sounds quite like my opposite," she mutters. "It seems blasphemous to compare anyone such as myself to such a goddess."
Camilla's eyes drift over to Arthur, and she smirks more than smiles, and his stomach drops and his face heats up because she knows. Lady Camilla seems to know everything, and he doesn't know exactly how she does it. Had she realized when he carried Nyx's bag for her? Or when he insisted on helping her over a sizable gap in a dilapidated stairway? Perhaps it was when he had offered her half of his dinner and all of his dessert, or-
"Well, I'm sure there is at least one person out there who might call you a goddess." Camilla withdraws her hand from Nyx and goes to Elise and Effie.
Nyx hums and scrawls something on a piece of paper, then stuffs it in the pages. "Perhaps a long time ago, milady. Perhaps a long time ago."
There's silence between Nyx and everyone else for the next hour, while they eat and she writes and reads. Arthur puts a small plate down in front of her, hoping that, even though she barely eats, the smell of fresh food will tempt her. After a few minutes, she absentmindedly reaches for a buttered scone, and he smiles.
"You know what this party needs?" Lady Elise hops off her chair and goes to her bag to rummage. "Music!"
"Are you going to play, Elise?" Corrin asks.
"Please, do grace our ears," Arthur tells her, delighted when her smile lights up and she pulls out her violin.
"I'll play!" She sets the violin under her chin and runs the bow across it a couple times, her tongue poking out and her brow scrunched as she tries to figure out a tune.
"Nyx," Lady Camilla speaks again, and everyone watches as she puts down her tea. "Do you have any hobbies?"
Nyx turns in her seat, regarding the princess with a befuddled expression. "Pardon?"
"I was just wondering," she responds. "Do you?"
Arthur watches as she shuts her current book. Her shoulders slump and she appears more exasperated with the people in the room than the tomes. "Much like Princess Elise, I played the violin at one point. That's the closest thing to a 'hobby' that I can think of."
Elise rushes across the room to Nyx, brushing past Arthur, and shoves her violin and bow at her. "Play!"
Nyx leans away and scrunches her nose up. "Sorry?"
"You said you played violin," Elise presses. "I wanna hear you play! So do Arthur and Effie and Camilla."
Elise keeps pushing the violin towards the sorceress, begs and pleas falling from her mouth, but Nyx keeps refusing the instrument. Her hands push it back and she keeps shaking her head while the rest of them watch.
"Please!" Elise begs.
"No, milady."
Arthur wants very much to hear her play, to watch her deft fingers wrap around the bow and coax out a melody. However, she looks uncomfortable at the prospect and the way Elise is shoving the violin at her, so he steps in and hoists the princess up from under her arms. "Now, Lady Elise, it's not heroic or just to force someone to do something. It's the opposite. It's unjust."
The princess kicks a little and looks thoroughly scolded. "Nyx, why won't you play?"
A look crosses Nyx's face, a numb expression, and she swivels around in her chair and opens a book so harshly that the rotting cover nearly rips off the binding. Arthur sets the princess down gently, noting how Effie is glaring at him for scolding her; really, she should learn how to be at least a little firm with their lady. Maybe take a page or two out of Beruka's book, perhaps.
Across the room, Camilla makes some comment that Corrin laughs at, and all the tension in the air pops away as a friendly conversation starts back up. The longing looks Elise gives to Nyx doesn't go unnoticed by Arthur, however, and he's pretty sure she's deliberately trying to get someone to notice her misery.
It's with a sigh that Arthur walks back to Nyx's side and waits for her quill to finish scratching in a sentence before putting a hand on her shoulder. "I hate to ask this of you, fair Nyx, but would you play for us?"
She glares up at him. "Hmm? Why? I'm nowhere near the skill level of the young lady. I'd embarrass myself."
"Maybe," he concedes, "but she's not going to stop making that horrible puppy dog face until you work out a tune for her." His face twists into a grimace. "Please, it's making my heart hurt."
She places a hand underneath her chin and peeks over her shoulder at Elise and Effie, and, finally, she sighs and mumbles, "One song, I suppose. I hope the princess has sheet music with her."
She's barely left her chair before Elise shoves the violin into her hands with a delighted smile. "I have sheet music. Give me just a minute to find it for you."
Nyx sighs and regards the violin with an expression that Arthur can't exactly read. It looks a little numb, a little distant, perhaps pained, but she's obviously fighting to keep whatever she's feeling at bay. He reaches out, almost unconsciously, and lets his hand hover near her. Her head snaps towards him, perplexed, and he does his best to give her a reassuring smile. She looks away at the ground.
Too forward, he thinks to himself. How rude of him to come onto her like that! He looks over his shoulder to make sure there's nothing behind him before he takes a long step back to give her ample personal space, but then she speaks without looking back at him and he stops right in his tracks.
"I hope you won't think badly of my playing, Arthur," she says. "It's been a very long time, but since you insisted… I had a hard time saying no."
Then she gives him a glance over her shoulder with her sharp, ageless eyes, and it's a very sweet look that he immediately adores. Full of innocence, a bit of teasing, and his heart picks up a few beats.
"Here it is!" Elise shuffles the papers in her hands to get the correct order of the pages, then holds them in front of Nyx. "Are you ready?"
She sighs once more. "Are you really so insistent?"
"Play for us," Corrin presses.
"We'd love to hear a melody," Arthur encourages.
At last, she sets the violin on her shoulder, sets the bow along the strings, squints once more at the sheet music Elise holds, and plays.
It's the most wonderful song Arthur has ever heard. It's got squeaks and stutters here and there, accompanied by little grimaces from her (she stops after the first mistake to apologize, to remind them that she hasn't played since she was young, but Effie encourages her right back into the song), but the way her eyes drift shut, the light curl of her lips as she finally understands the tune, and her perfect poise as she spins a melody makes it the most beautiful sound in the entire world.
After what is definitely too short a time, she lowers the violin and hands it back to Elise with a flush on her cheeks and an embarrassed hand covering her mouth. "Forgive me, I think I might've gotten carried away."
And that was the third time Arthur realized he was hopelessly in love with the fair Nyx.
The fourth time is not long after they return to Nohr, and Elise grants Arthur time off to go help a small town, a place he has spent time in before, that they've heard has been ransacked by bandits. As a hero of justice, he knows it's his duty to go and aid those poor people, and his princess seems to know it as well, because he doesn't even have to ask her if he can go. She just turns to him and nods, all serious like she's trying to imitate her brothers, and walks away humming.
Nyx accompanies him (he doesn't know why), not seeming to mind the day-long trip out to the countryside. In fact, she looks peaceful on the back of the wagon they've so kindly gotten a ride on, with her legs and her bag drawn to her chest. She sneezes every now and then with the hay flying everywhere, and she scolds him when he tells her how cute the sound is.
He's especially glad that she decided to accompany him when she holds onto his hand and prevents him from falling off the cart multiple times.
The cart drops them off when it reaches its own destination, the driver apologizes for being unable to take them further, and Arthur pulls a map from his bag and starts walking down the road. He looks up at the sky, frowning as he looks for any malicious birds who might swoop down to snatch it. He doesn't want to look like an utter idiot in front of Nyx, after all, or get her lost. It would be unheroic if they lost their way and he made her sleep outside, just because of his terrible luck.
"Let me hold that," she says suddenly, holding out her hand. "I think it'll be safer with me."
"Have you had a vision?" Arthur asks.
"No." She plucks it from his fingers and takes the lead. "Only a hunch."
They don't lose the map.
The walk is a short three hours, and they reach the town shortly before sunset. Arthur turns his attention to Nyx when he hears her breathing heavy, but she waves away his offers to carry her and/or her bags and instead keeps walking into the town, mumbling and grumbling about being "too old for walking so long."
The mayor of the town greets Arthur warmly, remembering him from his previous heroic and just deeds, and directs them to the inn to settle in. There's only one room available, and Nyx takes it without a second thought, despite the way he turns a bit (probably actually a lot) red.
The room is nicely furnished, and he immediately notices it only has a single bed- a rather small one at that. He swallows, feels the back of his neck heat up, and looks over to his companion. He's a man of justice, and the just thing to do is offer her the sole right to the bed. "Nyx, you can have-"
"I'll sleep here." She's already spreading a blanket out over a chair and pulling her things out of her bag to try and cushion it.
His stomach drops with horror. He can't let a maiden sleep on a chair when there's a perfectly good bed! "No, Nyx, please take the bed."
She hums and shakes her head. "No, sir. You'll be doing much more work than I will be tomorrow, so you will be taking it. You need more of a good rest than I do."
"I can sleep just fine in a chair," he argues.
"But you won't have to. I'll be tending to injuries and illness tomorrow, not lifting and building and whatever else it is you'll be doing. Besides, I've slept on even worse, believe me."
She continues to smooth out the blanket over the chair, and it twists his stomach and frustration sets in. He strides over to her, trying to look firm, but his foot catches on the edge of a carpet and he stumbles. Fortunately, he catches himself and straightens back up, but she's looking at him with an amused expression that completely throws him and the stern mood he'd been going for.
Arthur clears his throat. "I insist that you sleep on the bed. I won't take no for an answer. If you refuse, then I'll sleep on the floor, and then neither of us shall have it."
Nyx finally agrees to take the bed after a long debate, and he's so relieved that he gets a perfectly fine night of sleep in the chair and is completely ready to take on the rigors of the next day. He's already been working for a good hour before Nyx comes out of the inn, dressed in a long skirt and black vest, and she looks blearily around the clearing where people are working and repairing damages.
"What an energetic scene," she comments.
"Isn't it inspiring?" he asks. A pebble, flung from a mason beating a stone across the street, strikes the back of his head, but he keeps smiling and puts his hands on his waist. "All these good people, working in unison."
Her eyes rove around, still obviously tired. "Positively so."
She walks towards him, and as she draws closer, he can see the way her eyelids hang over her eyes- she's even more tired than she should be, and he rubs his jaw and fixes his eyes on her. "Did you not sleep well?"
"I don't ever sleep well," she responds, "and I'm not a morning person. Forgive me."
She looks a bit sheepish and fingers a thick piece of her hair, refusing to look at him, but he's so relieved that she isn't sick or in pain that he doesn't even note how lovely the simple action is. Instead, he laughs, and her face goes a light shade of red. Nyx's hands dive into the bag slung across her body and she digs around, finally pulling out a parcel tied with a perfect bow at the top. She shoves it into his hands and then backs away, like she's handed him something dangerous.
"That's a special blend I made," she mutters. "When you get tired, you should eat two of the capsules. They'll provide extra energy."
Arthur stares at her for a moment- is he really getting this lucky? Getting such a wonderful present from the fair Nyx? He unties the parcel with care after a moment. Three little pills fall out, but he catches them before they go far and places them back in the pile. They're small and bright red, and smell fragrant instead of bitter like normal concoctions.
He grins, looking up to thank the sorceress, but she's already fled and left him alone.
Another pebble hits him in the back of the head, he ties up the parcel and places it in his pocket, and gets back to work.
He sees her around town throughout the day, but he's always too busy lifting beams or entertaining children to take a moment and talk to her. Sometimes she's talking to people and writing in a small notebook, sometimes she's handing over small parcels and vials of medicines. A couple of times he sees her carrying bags and speaking with women, and another time, as the day draws to a close and the stars are out, he finally finds her sitting on top of a pile of cut rocks with a group of enamored kids clustered around her feet.
"Haven't you seen the trick enough times now, children?" she asks, but she sounds patient and lovely instead of annoyed. "Does it really amuse you so much?"
A solid chorus of "do it again!" erupts from the audience, and she smiles and cups her hands together in front of her, like she's about to take a drink from a river. Arthur pauses for a moment to take in the sight of her- she's gotten her cloak from their room to fight off the night's chill, and it flutters around her in the wind. She's also abandoned her tight vest, leaving her in just a flowing white shirt that emphasizes the color of her hair. There's a gentle smile on her face that he could stare at for hours, but a young man tugs on the edge of his shirt and beckons him down next to him.
Arthur sits. "What's going on?"
"The sorceress has been entertaining the younger kids with magic for a little while now. She keeps trying to leave, but they keep insisting she does more tricks." The young man looks back to the front and stares intently at Nyx. "I think she's going to do it now."
Even Arthur finds himself watching with bated breath as Nyx leans in towards her hands. He's never seen her cast spells idly- in the war, they were always practiced battle spells, and in the castle, they're always little charms and such to help her potions and work. A few other adults crowd around the children, not caring about how dark it is or how tired they are- like him, they're only interested in watching the sorceress work.
Nyx blows into her palm- it's so quiet that he can hear her do it. After a moment, a silver light illuminates her face and she leans away, smiling contentedly, and she spreads her hands out. She reveals a cluster of glowing orbs, all tiny and sparking as they fly through the air. They burst like miniature fireworks, taking different shapes, and each burst spreads light over the crowd. Fascinated children and adults alike reach to touch the lights, but they pop like bubbles as soon as anyone touches them.
People are laughing and clapping, and the delighted look on Nyx's face doesn't go unnoticed by Arthur. He's never seen her look so relaxed and happy as when the kids grab at her skirt and hands and beg her to please cast one more spell, just one more! Their parents come and take them away, however, thanking her profusely for the light show, and she waves them off until all of them are gone and it is just her and Arthur.
She looks at him so suddenly that it almost startles him, and she smiles and tilts her head. "You were here? Did you enjoy my show?"
He's breathless, speechless, witless in front of her, under the stars, and only says something stupid along the lines of "uhhhh."
Nice. Real smooth.
She smiles a little more, walks down the path leading back towards the inn, and he finally can feel his feet again and follows her.
"They looked bored," she explains unprompted. "At first, I was just showing them little fire spells, but they seemed so impressed with the light show that they insisted I keep doing that." She flexes her fingers in front of herself and looks at them. "My fingers feel a little numb."
"It was wonderful!" he blurts out suddenly. "It was beautiful! Lord Leo couldn't have cast a better spell."
Nyx doesn't respond. He wishes another pebble, or maybe a full-sized rock, would fly from out of nowhere again and hit him and just let him die because he's such an idiot, but she finally responds when the arrive and pause at the entrance to the inn, and there's a smile in her voice.
"You know, I've spent most of my years avoiding people," she starts. "I never pictured myself doing something like this. Being surrounded by others, actually helping people with my magic; even a year ago, I would've laughed at the notion."
He holds his breath and waits for her to continue, but she doesn't, so he speaks to fill up the odd silence between them. "D-do you… think you like it?"
She glanced at him over her shoulder with the smallest of smiles. "So long as it's with you, I think I love it."
She vanishes into the inn, hurrying, and leaves Arthur wanting to fall into a pitfall and die when he realizes he loves her so much, it's become painful.
The fifth time, there's no laughing, no charms or violins, no casting frivolous little spells in a town in the middle of nowhere. Instead, there's a man in the infirmary missing an arm with a face that has been almost ripped off. When Arthur receives the report, he's told that the man is a border guard who had an unfortunate run-in with one of the few straggling Faceless. Lady Camilla had been doing a check on a fort there and had slaughtered the Faceless with apparent ease. Afterwards, she'd flown the poor man back to Windmire herself so someone could try to salvage whatever was left of him.
Elise walks out of the room with her staff clutched tight in her hands. She looks sweaty, pale, and scared out of her mind, even when Effie holds her and strokes the top of her head lovingly, in that way that always gets her calm.
"Lady Elise?" Arthur reaches out and she dives into his arms, crying and blubbering.
"He's in so much pain!" she wails, and she repeats that over and over for five minutes until she settles down.
"Is there anything you can do?" Effie asks. There's trepidation in her voice; she doesn't want to set their princess off again. Arthur feels tears in his eyes that are threatening to spill already, and he doesn't know what a round two of his little lady sobbing will do to him.
Elise brushes the tears away from her face. "Well, we've done all we c-can with our staves. He has to be treated normally now. I don't know what's gonna happen."
"What happens happens," Arthur tells her.
She spins back towards him with her eyes shining again and his stomach plummets to the floor. "I don't want him to die! It isn't fair!"
Effie looks at Arthur across from Elise. Her bottom lip is between her teeth and she looks nervous, maybe even sick to her stomach, and Arthur imagines he looks much the same. It's rare that the princess gets so distressed, and she has never lost a patient before outside of the chaos of the war. In a stable environment, where she has time to dwell upon it, they aren't sure how she'll handle failing.
Arthur wants to just hold her, play games with her in her room until the whole thing passes and she forgets, but that isn't an option. Someone has to heal the man.
"Now, don't you worry."
The sound of Nyx's shoes against the floor is familiar to him now- he could hear it from a mile away. She comes down the hall in her uniform, her mouth set in a grim line, and a clipboard balanced against her arm. She stops when she reaches them and puts a hand on Elise's shoulder and waits until the princess acknowledges her.
"I'll be taking care of this patient now, milady," she assures. "You needn't worry."
Arthur stays behind and waits in the hallway while Effie escorts Elise to lunch and Nyx checks the patient in the room. There's no sound except for the occasional scratch of a chair against the floor. Five minutes pass, then ten, and then those multiply into a straight hour before she finally comes out. She shuts the door gently behind her and sighs, sliding a pair of reading glasses off her nose before she notices that he's there.
"How does it look?" he asks.
Her shoulders slump and she jams the glasses into her breast pocket. "He won't make it."
Arthur stays quiet. How will he break this news to Lady Elise? How long will she mourn?
"Even if he did have a chance to survive, his quality of life would severely decline." She starts walking down the hall and he follows. "He probably doesn't even have another couple of days left at this rate."
"The lady Elise is going to be heartbroken," he mutters. "For this man to die on her watch."
"I've confiscated any rights the princess has to the patient for myself," Nyx tells him. Her eyes remained fixed on something in the distance that he can't see, her eyebrows furrowed. "When this man dies, it will be on my conscious, and the princess will not have to face the emotional consequences."
Arthur stop walking, staring stupidly at her back until she stops as well to look back at him. "You would do that for her?"
Nyx glances to the ground and presses her mouth in a flat line. "I've seen many people die, Arthur. One more will not hurt."
He feels sick at the ache in her voice.
Despite having no responsibility towards him anymore, Elise continues to visit the border guard, bringing flowers and happily chatting about all the things he can do when he's better. The man is very kind and always perks up when they arrive and eagerly talks with the princess to the best of his ability and gladly listens to all of her stories. He tells Arthur and Effie when Elise leaves the room at a point that she reminds him of his youngest sister back home.
Nyx is in the room and something in her expression darkens. Something in Arthur twists.
"You keep getting better, okay?" Elise waves at the border guard while Effie urges her out of the room. "I'll come have breakfast with you tomorrow!"
"I look forward to it." The man waves back and Arthur watches as he slumps back against the bed as soon as the princess is out of sight.
Nyx is sitting at a small desk, grinding something in a bowl, and she peeks over at Arthur. "Aren't you going to go?"
He jumps and immediately steps towards the door. "Of course, fair Nyx! I-I was just wondering if you needed anything before I left."
She doesn't smile, and she keeps mixing. "No. You should leave."
Arthur looks at the man struggling to breathe on the bed, then back at Nyx and her tight shoulders and hard expression, and it becomes very obvious that her patient is going to pass very soon, and she wants to be alone. He closes the door gently behind him and follows after Effie and the princess.
It's pitch-black in the hallways when he finally steals away from the princess, sleeping soundly with Effie offering to take the first guard shift, and walks back to the hospital wing. He's not entirely sure what he's going to do when he gets there- he's not even sure if the man is dead or not. No, he doesn't know what he's going to do, but he feels he should be there.
The hospital wing is empty and quiet when he finally makes his way there after getting lost in the dark five times and tripping down a few flights of stairs, fortunately no worse for the wear. The occasional doctor and nurse walks from room to room, white spectres in the dark, but not one of them is lithe and lovely enough to by Nyx. He walks carefully to the border guard's room, trying to not fall on anything, and he finds the door open halfway when he finally gets there.
Nyx is on a stool, bent over the bed of her patient and holding his hand. Her other is roving across his face with a cloth, and her back is to the door. The border guard is squirming uncomfortably, and is squeezing her hand in what appears to be a painfully tight manner. He groans and she shushes him gently, still caressing his face with the washcloth, but Arthur has seen men die and knows that she just can't do anything for him at this point.
"Thank you for staying," the guard works out.
Nyx removes the cloth from his face and sets it on the bedside table. "It's nothing."
"It means a lot to m-me," he counters.
She stays quiet for a moment. "The pain will be over soon. I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you."
"Nonsense. You've done your best, Miss Nyx. And the company of the princess has been all the pain-killer I need."
The guard groans suddenly, clutching at the stump where his arm used to be. Nyx rests her hand over his and eases him back down onto the bed, whispering so faintly that Arthur cannot hear what she's saying. It might be a charm, because the guard stops groaning and flops limp back into the pillows, breathing heavy, and Nyx's shoulders shake under some strain.
"It'll be over soon," she repeats, holding the man's hand. "I'm sorry, but it'll be over soon. Just close your eyes. Go to sleep. It'll stop hurting, I promise."
She's begging him, and Arthur's heart twists.
It's another ten minutes where he's frozen outside the door, watching Nyx hold the poor man's hand as he groans and gasps and clutches at his throat as he struggles to breathe, and finally, finally, he goes still under her careful gaze. She waits a minute, then another, before finally getting up off the stool and setting his hand gently over his chest.
"You should stop staring, Arthur." She speaks so suddenly and her voice is so hoarse that it startles him. "It's considered rude, and I know you don't want that."
It strikes Arthur then that he should've closed the door and waited for her to come out, done something other than stand there like an idiot and watch her ease a man into death. When she finishes scrawling something on a clipboard and setting a sheet over his body and moves towards him, he expects her to scold him or, even worse, leave wordlessly, but she does something completely different.
She walks straight into him and rests her head against his chest without a sound.
"Nyx?"
"He looked a little like a companion I used to have." Her voice is hushed with mourning. "I only just realized it earlier."
"A companion?" Arthur places his hands on her shoulders and she presses her face harder against him. He's never heard her talk about her personal matters.
"He made violins. He always asked me to play them."
The memory of her frozen face when Lady Elise asked her to play comes back to him, and it suddenly makes sense.
"What-"
Nyx senses his question and responds before he even finishes. "He died a long time ago trying to help protect me from some bad people. They cracked his skull and ripped his throat out."
A shudder wracks his spine and she backs away, her eyes clouded over with guilt. She shakes her head a tiny bit, like she's waking herself from some reverie. "I have to go record his passing. Forgive me for imposing on you, Arthur."
She's just close enough when he finally finds his words for him to grab her shoulder. "You haven't imposed, Nyx! A hero like myself is always ready to listen to a friend in need."
It takes a lot of self-control to keep his back straight and the smile on his face, especially when she turns back around and there are tears glistening in her eyes. All he wants to do is hug her, hold her until the sadness goes away, but it isn't his right and it isn't his place to do so.
"Bend down a little," she requests after a moment passes. "If you please."
It's a perfectly reasonable request, and he doesn't find any reason to refuse, so he leans down just slightly and wonders exactly what is is that the fair sorceress is up to. He gets his answer a moment later when she reaches up and drags her fingers through his hair. The look on her face is far-away and numb, and the feeling of her nimble fingers softly running through his locks has his face heating up until he feels he's likely to explode. Given his luck, maybe he might.
In any case, for the first time, he has the urge to kiss her.
He doesn't get the chance, however, but when she's done ruffling his strands, she presses her lips to his forehead and it's definitely one of the best things that has ever happened to him. The gesture is brief, way too brief, but her skin is warm and her lips are soft, and he feels like he could get easily drunk on the sensation, as easily as he had on the spirits served to him all those months ago shortly before he first realized he was in love.
Nyx pulls away and steps back, her face bright red. "I'm sorry."
He swallows heavily and stand straight again, trying to not focus on how her fingers glide across her lips as she moves to hide her face. "I-it's just fine. Wh-what're friends for?"
There's still nothing in her that can smile, but the air around her is a little less heavy and sad, and that is enough for him. She mutters, "Thank you for waiting for me. It made me feel better."
It's the fifth time he realizes he loves her and the first time he realizes he won't ever be satisfied without her.
a/n: yeah there'll probably be a second part w/ the proposal. because their s-support was so sweet it gave me cavities