~ Tнє Pαяα∂σχ Hσυѕє ~ now back to regularly scheduled chaos

Smol Kelsier | Living Room | strider

A blond boy, around six or seven, possibly, appeared, laying sprawled out awkwardly on the floor. His arms were splayed out at slightly unnatural angles and his legs were folded over each other, creating a sort of pretzel effect.
He squinted open his eyes as light suddenly shone into them. He’d been in a completely dark room before, and his immediate thought was that he’d fallen asleep and someone had lit a lantern to wake him up, but…
He sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes as he stared around the room, which he had definitely not fallen asleep in. This one had odd lantern things, and...carpet...and books. Lots of books. He stood up, still rubbing his eyes and trying hard to figure out how he’d managed to trespass into someone’s very nice, very expensive home without even trying.

“Don’t,” Nico growled, voice low as he stared at someone who wasn’t there anymore. He seemed to relax a little bit, though he was still wary of his surroundings. The living room was peaceful, but sometimes blinkers weren’t. He took a deep breath, letting his eyes close for just a moment as he composed himself before examining the room. He wasn’t alone, which wasn’t strange. The House didn’t seem to like to see people on their own. Nico didn’t know for sure why – he figured it was probably boring. Still, he wasn’t the biggest fan of strangers.
He was about to say something to the boy when the light caught on the kid’s face and he froze, mouth open just a little bit in shock.
“Oh,” Nico managed, shutting his mouth and taking a small step back from the kid. Or… no, not ‘the kid.’ Kelsier. Before the scars. Before Hathsin. Before Snapping. Kelsier, small and defenseless and just about ready to be eaten alive by the House.

Nico blinked, unsure what Kelsier meant, at first. Then it became clear that he was reacting to what Nico had said as he’d blinked in. He had forgotten, it seemed, that new blinkers weren’t used to disregarding the first words someone said when they blinked. So of course Kelsier thought Nico was reprimanding him.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, running a hand awkwardly through his hair. “I mean… that wasn’t to you. The ‘don’t.’ If you want to steal something around here…” he looked around, then gave a small shrug, “be my guest. You won’t get in trouble for it. There’s really nobody here to get you in trouble, and I won’t tell if you try to take something.” Was little Kelsier as much of a thief as older Kelsier, or had that come later in life? It was impossible to tell.

Nico gave a small, uncertain smile, then shook his head. “If I remember correctly, breaking in requires an actual intent to enter. I didn’t choose to be here, and you didn’t really choose either. I wish I could tell you there were valuable things here, but… if there are, they aren’t the sort of valuable things that are tangible. They’re more like… well, friendship is valuable, but it’s not really something you can steal.” He shrugged, biting his lip for a moment before kneeling down so he was closer to the same height as Kelsier.
“You know… you’re being very brave for someone who just appeared somewhere without actually knowing where they are. Are you alright?”

“Really?” Nico asked, brows raising in mock surprise. “I remember the first time I appeared here. I wasn’t that much older than you, actually. And on the surface, I was really really excited to see somewhere I had never been before. But way down deep, under the surface? I was terrified. So it’s alright to be afraid, if you are. And if you aren’t, that’s okay, too.” It was odd to imagine Kelsier afraid of anything. It was odd to see Kelsier as a kid. As childish as he was at times, Nico hadn’t really been able to fathom the fact that Kelsier had really been a child, once.
“This place is called the Paradox House,” Nico explained, keeping his tone soft and slow. “You’re going to reappear in your world exactly when you left it, so don’t worry about that.”

Right. They were going to have to start from square one. Distantly, Nico wondered if this was going to destroy some sort of timeline. If Kelsier heard about the House when he was a child, would he still be so unfamiliar with it when he met Nico? Nico pushed the thought away. He didn’t want to think too hard about the possibility of losing the dad he’d just gained, and though this little kid was undoubtedly Kelsier, he also wasn’t the Kelsier Nico knew. This Kelsier needed someone to explain the House to him and protect him from it if it decided to be cruel or ruthless.
“Your world,” Nico began slowly, trying to find the right words. “Is where you’re from, right? Except this place can bring people together from all sorts of different worlds. I see you’ve got ash on your shirt… which leads me to believe you’re from the same world as a friend of mine.” Did that sound like a convincing lie? Nico resisted the urge to wince. He was trying. “My world doesn’t have mist like his does. We have something called the Mist, but it’s nothing like the mist that settles over his world every night. So you see… we’re from very different places, but the Paradox House gives us a chance to meet.”

Nico tilted his head a little bit as he looked at Kelsier. It was odd, seeing him like this, knowing so much about his future. How much pain this child was going to have to go through before he came out the other end, stronger than he had been before. Was it worth being shattered? What would have become of Kelsier if he had never been through Hathsin? If he had been allowed to grow up with a normal childhood in a world where people like him weren’t hated for what they were?
“You don’t have to worry about being clean around me,” Nico murmured softly, gesturing to the tear in his pants, right at his knee. “I’m not exactly the most put together. But… I guess Marsh has a point. Being clean could keep you safe.” Nico didn’t know for sure if that was true, but he found he didn’t know as much about Kelsier’s childhood as he thought he had. It had never really come up. Not much about Kelsier’s life before Hathsin had. Was it possible that this child had died in those pits? That the Survivor had been born, bearing Kelsier’s name and face and the remnants of a boy who had disappeared?
“It’s nice to meet you, Kel,” Nico said after a moment, noting the similarity between the boy’s smile and the man he had come to look up to. Perhaps he was wrong, then. Perhaps this boy hadn’t died in Hathsin. “I’m Nico. And… there are adults here, sometimes, but they don’t own the place or anything. They come here just like you and I did, and most of them are nice. Most, but not all.”

Nico just managed to conceal his wince before Kelsier saw it. He had very clearly said the wrong thing, had managed to freak Kelsier out and get him on the defensive. It was probably a good thing there was nobody else from Kelsier’s world here, especially nobody noble. The last thing Nico had expected was Kelsier pretending to be noble, but he supposed he technically was half noble. The thing was, it would be like Nico pretending to be a god. It wouldn’t go over very well if he were caught. It felt like another dirty trick by the House, making Nico learn more about Kelsier without his express permission. He bit his lip, doing his best to ignore the feeling building in his chest. He wasn’t going to be mad at the House here. He was going to make sure that Kelsier felt as safe as he could, here.
“That makes sense,” Nico said evenly, glancing at Kelsier for a long moment. “Of course, you’ll be safe from being punished by adults if you keep yourself clean.” He bit his lip, hoping that was good enough to calm Kelsier down. To reassure him that he was safe here.
“My world doesn’t really have divisions between nobility and everyone else,” he added, hoping that would help, too. He didn’t know if Kelsier had developed his revolutionary spirit, yet. It was possible, but he was so young… it was hard to tell. He could hardly be blamed if he hadn’t.
Nico’s brows quirked up as Kelsier very clearly changed the subject, doing something suitably dramatic to turn Nico’s mind away from his comment.
“How is it? Fun?”

“With that much ash falling, it’s completely understandable,” Nico replied evenly, somewhat surprised that Kelsier hadn’t noticed or commented on how grimy his own clothes were. They were black, which made it a little bit easier to hide, but he couldn’t quite remember the last time he’d had a chance to change clothes. The ones he was wearing were torn and bloodstained, covered in a few layers of sweat that had dried in the hot Italian sun. He didn’t smell very nice, but he wasn’t too concerned about that. In his opinion, if you were saving the world, you got a bit of a pass on being filthy. Although… given how torn up his shirt was, he did think it would be best to go find somewhere where he could buy a new one.
“What makes the nobility better?” Nico asked suddenly, dark eyes locking on hazel. Had Kelsier been raised noble? It seemed he had, but he still clearly knew he was Skaa, judging from his reaction to Nico’s mention of danger. So did he really believe the nobility were better, or was he just saying that because it was what he thought Nico expected to hear? “If you’re from the same world as my friend, the Skaa work incredibly hard. They lead lives that are worth something, and even if they don’t have very much money, they continue to try to make their lives worthwhile. It’s not their fault they weren’t born into a noble family, so why should they be punished and looked down on just because of their birth, especially when they’re capable of the same brilliance as the nobility?”
He glanced at the couch, then looked away sharply.
“I don’t… think there would be enough room for both of us,” Nico said softly. “You should keep having fun.”

Looking at Kelsier, Nico was surprised to see some of himself reflected back. Kelsier knew he was Skaa. That much was obvious from the way he had reacted before, which meant… either he fully believed this all about himself, or he didn’t believe it and was just reciting it to protect himself. Who had taught him to do that? His mother? Marsh? Nico shuddered a little, his mind snagging on a brief snippet of memory from when he was very little, still living in Venice. He remembered a boy with green eyes and a vibrant smile, a boy who could always goad Nico into chasing him around the canals and through the streets, with freckles and dark curls… and he remembered the way his cheeks had flushed when he spoke of him. He remembered asking Bianca what a crush felt like and then rambling about the boy… he didn’t even remember his name, now. It wasn’t important. What he did remember was the way Bianca had grabbed his shoulders, forcing him inside so nobody would overhear her when she told him in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t say things like that out loud. That he had to hide the part of himself that was capable of feeling like his heart was pounding because of a boy. He remembered the way she coached him through what to say if anyone caught on, and the words she had forced into his head were just a little bit too similar to what Kelsier was saying now for Nico’s comfort.
“Listen,” Nico whispered, taking in a deep breath and fixing Kelsier with an intense look. “You can’t repeat this to anyone else, because it’s the sort of thing that might get you in trouble, but… the Skaa can do anything the nobility can. You all bleed the same, and though Allomancy is rarer in the Skaa than it is in the nobility, Allomancy is just a tool. It doesn’t make anyone better than anyone else. The Skaa can be just as smart or strong as the noblemen. In fact… I bet many of the Skaa are stronger from the type of labor that they have to do. I need you to understand that, and I need you to never, ever repeat it to anyone, okay?”

Nico listened, eyes widening just a little bit as Kelsier reached the crux of the issue. The threats that had been levied against Kelsier to keep him in line, to make sure that nobody ever found out that he was Skaa. It was familiar to him, the words only slightly different from the ones Bianca had made him repeat over and over and over again. Slowly, Nico made his way over to the couch, sitting on the other end, as far away as he could get from Kelsier. It was partially for his own sake, but he had a feeling Kelsier needed the space, too. Especially since Nico was saying things that were probably pretty scary given what Kelsier had been told.
He was so young… regardless of whether he actually believed the nobility to be superior, he was at the age where he was going to internalize at least some of it… how much hatred would Kelsier have to bear before he came to terms with who and what he was?
“My friend is Skaa,” Nico said quietly, pulling his legs up onto the couch. “He’s also Mistborn.” He was silent for a very long time after that, deciding what, exactly, might be helpful to say.
Eventually, Nico shifted his gaze towards his shoe, pulling awkwardly at the laces in an attempt to make his mind formulate the right words.
“When I was a little older than you,” he began softly, not looking at Kelsier, “I started to have feelings for a boy that I studied with. I was… young, so it was just little things, like… I wanted to hold hands, and I told my older sister that I wanted to marry him one day. I didn’t know… well… in my world, when I was little, people who fall in love with people the same gender as them were seen as wrong… as… sick, and twisted, and the type of people who purposefully hurt children. And if I had told anyone but my older sister that I liked this boy, I could have been killed and nobody would have blinked an eye. So my older sister told me that I couldn’t ever tell anyone, that if I so much as breathed a word of it, I would be dead and our mother would have to grieve me, and if anyone found out why I died, she and my sister might be forced from our home. Nobody could ever find out, because it was something dirty and secret, and if I couldn’t change it then I better learn how to hide it.” Nico fell silent for a long moment, hugging his knees to his chest. “I grew up thinking that it was wrong. And shameful. And now that I’m older, people believe otherwise. That people like me… people who like people their same gender… are just like everyone else. We always were, but people didn’t see it. And it’s not okay to kill us anymore. I know that probably sounds pretty silly to you, because your world doesn’t have any problem with things like that… but it’s possible that one day people will realize the Skaa are just like everyone else. And maybe they’ll realize that killing them is wrong.”

Nico didn’t want to contribute to Kelsier getting in trouble, but he couldn’t just let Kelsier go on believing that he was inferior just because of who he was. Nico had dealt with the pain of that for years, and nobody had pulled him aside and told him that there was nothing wrong with who he was. That it was his world that was wrong, not Nico himself. He didn’t know if that would have spared him much (if any) heartache, but it would have been better than believing himself fully alone with a secret that nobody would accept him for. Logically, he knew Kelsier wasn’t alone, but Marsh wasn’t really the best when it came to support. Marsh was too focused on keeping Kelsier alive, just as Bianca had been. It struck him once again that he and Kelsier were more similar than he had ever imagined. Was that part of why Kelsier had become so protective over Nico?
“Yes, he’s both,” Nico confirmed, giving a small nod. “I don’t know how that happened, but it did. I think his father was noble.” There. He wasn’t going to describe Kelsier to Kelsier, but he needed him to know it was okay. “He’s the bravest, strongest, and most inspiring man I’ve ever met. And he might be part noble, but he identifies more with the Skaa.”
It seemed that Nico’s story had at least helped calm Kelsier. The kid still seemed a little bit nervous, but at least he had latched on to what Nico had only just started to understand as ‘ridiculous.’
“Well,” he replied with a small shrug, searching Kelsier’s gaze, “you could also be killed for not identifying only with the gender you were assigned when you were born. It wasn’t as widespread, though, because there weren’t a lot of people in the general public who knew there even were people who didn’t identify with how they were assigned. In the popular view of my world when I was growing up, there were only girls and boys, and girls could only like boys, and boys could only like girls. It’s… changed a lot since I was your age.” He didn’t want to imply that change might happen that quickly in Kelsier’s world, but he also didn’t want to get into details about the Lotus Hotel. They weren’t relevant right now.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Nico whispered after a moment, scooting just a little bit closer. “There aren’t Skaa and nobility in my world, but there are mortals and gods. And I’m a half-blood. That doesn’t mean my blood is dirty, just a little bit different.”

Nico didn’t expect Kelsier to say anything. He didn’t expect the boy to take his words to heart. They were strangers here, technically, and Kelsier had family in his world that were telling him exactly what he needed to do in order to stay alive. Nico couldn’t fault them that. If it kept them all alive, then it was worth it. Still, Nico hated the idea that Kelsier might grow up with a little bit of internalized hatred towards himself. He hated the idea that staying alive meant putting yourself down and believing yourself inferior because that was what you had to tell the world if you wanted to hide. Perhaps that was just because Nico had lived through it, but he wouldn’t wish it on anyone else. At least, he figured, he knew that Kelsier came out on the other side stronger. He came out as someone who would do anything to protect the Skaa, who was going to make his world fair for everyone else, in spite of the fact that it had never been fair for him.
“Yes,” Nico confirmed, giving a small nod. “He’s half-blooded. But his blood isn’t what makes him amazing. Frankly, being an Allomancer isn’t what makes him amazing either. It’s just a tool he can use, he’d be incredible even without it.”
It was interesting, Nico thought, how you could come to terms with oppression in your own world while being absolutely disgusted by it when you heard about it happening in someone else’s. Nico had believed for a while that he actually would deserve to be killed if anyone had found out. Kelsier clearly thought that was ridiculous. The same was true about the oppression Kelsier faced in his world. He didn’t seem to think anything of it, and Nico wanted nothing more than for it to be turned around.
“Yes, I’m half god,” Nico whispered after a moment, pulling his knees a little bit closer to his chest. “My father is a god, but he’s a god that nobody likes very much. A lot of people don’t like me because of who my father is… that, or they’re scared of me. Most mortals don’t believe the gods exist, so they’d probably think I’m crazy if I were to tell them the truth. But we aren’t defined by who our parents are. We’re defined by what we want to be, and what we do with the opportunities that are presented to us. That’s true of your world, too.”
Nico shifted, his gaze unflinching as he looked at Kelsier.
“My friend doesn’t believe the Skaa to be inferior. How do you know if they’re inferior if you’ve never talked to one?”

Baby Kel | Living Room | strider

Being told again and again that what you were was wrong cut deep, even if you didn’t technically believe it yourself. Kelsier wasn’t sure what he believed. He had a feeling he really was inferior because of what he was, if he was honest. Otherwise, why would a lot of very smart adults think so? He knew he couldn’t argue with them. They were all much older so they were probably right.
He didn’t like being messed up. But mostly what scared him was the others finding out. He didn’t know if he would have cared very much if there hadn’t been a lot of danger.
Then again, maybe he just couldn’t afford to care because there was danger.
He had no idea who he’d grow up to be. He only knew he wasn’t safe, and he needed to make sure he didn’t mess everything up. It was hard to keep all that in mind and still be able to concentrate on other things, so most of the time, he didn’t do a lot other than hide out.
The oppression in Nico’s world didn’t make any sense to him. So what if you liked a boy and you were a boy at the same time? He didn’t know why anyone else would even care about that. But it was much, much harder for him to see the same thing applied to his world. He was used to it, there. He couldn’t imagine a world where the Skaa and the nobility were equal. The world would be imbalanced, he assumed. The alignment of the universe would be off. He breathed out quietly, watching Nico.
“I’m not scared of you,” he said after a moment. “I like you. But maybe it isn’t so bad to have people be afraid of you. It’s better than being scared of them, right?”
Secretly, he thought he’d have given a lot to be feared. The bad things couldn’t happen if he was dangerous. If he could only protect them, then maybe he wouldn’t have to be scared all the time anymore.
He froze. This was exactly the sort of question he’d hoped to avoid. It had to be a trap...right? Except Nico didn’t seem to be testing. He looked like he really wanted to know.
“I…” he tried, biting his lip. He almost wanted to tell the truth. But he couldn't get the words to leave his lips.
“I don’t know,” he managed after a moment, voice small. “Everyone knows that. Even the Skaa know that. The Lord Ruler himself said it.”