ᴛʜᴇꜱᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀʏꜱ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʙɪɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛᴏɢᴇᴛʜᴇʀ, ꜰᴏʀᴇᴠᴇʀ - H&S

Nico wanted to learn. He wanted to learn whatever it was that Kelsier had to teach him, he wanted to learn how to burn, if only so it was one more thing he could do on top of flaring. And deeper than that, he didn’t want to die. He wanted to cling to life for as long as he possibly could, even if life was terrible and grey. He had already tried death. He had welcomed it and been ready to greet it, but he’d survived, instead. And now that he was alive, now that he was clinging on again… he didn’t want to let go. He didn’t want to give in, he wanted to try this crazy plan and wanted to believe in it, even if he couldn’t trust or even like Kelsier.
“It was terrible,” Nico contradicted softly, hand clenching into a fist at his side. It was probably better to be honest than to accept false praise. He didn’t understand where the false praise came from, didn’t understand what Kelsier was trying to do. He was about to try it again with another metal when he heard the rest of Kelsier’s words.
Breaks were a foreign concept to him. He didn’t see how they could help, and he wasn’t used to having time to do what he needed to do. He had to figure it out on the fly. That was how he had been trained. That was the only way he’d been able to be trained.
Nico didn’t know there was a way to exist without being used as a weapon. He hadn’t ever expected to be allowed to be his own person. He had never thought that he might be allowed to be anything other than a weapon. Kelsier could say whatever he liked, but Nico didn’t believe he wouldn’t start to use Nico for the exact same reasons. He was young and impressionable, and he was easily expendable. Perfect to use for the dirty work nobody else wanted to do. And the Survivor had no reason to like him. He was the enemy. Why not use the enemy for those sorts of things if you could get away with it?
Perhaps he was cynical, but cynicism was how he survived. He couldn’t afford to believe. He couldn’t afford to trust. Kelsier was going to find a way to take advantage of him.
His eyes narrowed at Kelsier’s suggestion. How could he possibly believe that? He stuck his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground. He had questions, of course. Things he wanted answered. But… he didn’t trust that he could ask those questions.
He stayed silent, waiting for Kelsier’s next instruction.

It was human nature to want to survive. Even after everything, even after launching himself at the knife that had been pointed at his heart… Nico wanted to survive. He wanted to live, even if he knew that wasn’t an option. He was just going to have to make it through day after day until Kelsier decided he was tired of this game. Nico had a feeling it would probably be soon. Either Kelsier would realize how stupid it all was, or one of the members of his crew would get through to him. Nico thought of the conversation he’d had with Hammond. How stupid had he been to be that honest with him? Was that going to be taken as evidence of him trying to manipulate the crew? He shook his head of the thought. This was not the time to be overthinking things. There would be plenty of time for that when he was locked back up in the room they had given him, trying to sort through everything that had happened here. This wasn’t training as he knew it. Kelsier probably knew that, too. The way he was doing it was purposeful, if not a little disarming.
“Did you burn on your first try?” Nico asked, grimacing almost immediately after as he heard the challenge in his voice. He was going to need to learn to remember to watch his tongue. He had lost so much of his training since killing Minos… things that would have kept him alive with Minos. Things that may yet keep him alive with Kelsier. Part of what made training so terrifying was the uncertainty. The not knowing what would get you killed and what would help you survive… that was what he was going to need to learn with Kelsier. And he figured he had better learn fast…
He bit his tongue as Kelsier suggested they go back. Day one, failed completely, he thought bitterly, trailing a short distance behind Kelsier. He still had metals left. Was that a test? Was he supposed to point it out? Would Kelsier be upset if he did, because it meant giving away an advantage? But… was not telling considered a lie? Surely Kelsier knew he had metals left. Eventually Nico stopped, dark eyes unreadable as he stared up at Kelsier.
“I have metals still,” he said, flaring bronze for a bit to prove it. “You don’t want me to have metals when I’m in the same building as your crew.” There. Now it was up to Kelsier to tell him what to do about it. Hopefully it wouldn’t be painful. Minos’ words somersaulted over and over in his head, but he tried to push them away. Some of them were lies. Mistborn could survive without metals in their system. Nico had just proven that. But still… it didn’t make him feel any better.

Nico grimaced at that, trying to shake his head of the memories that came rushing back as Kelsier spoke. When he had first fought Kelsier… that had likely been burning. The thing that Minos had taught him was weak and impractical… burning. Would he ever be able to burn properly again? Nico didn’t know. He thought he wanted to, if only to compare burning and flaring for himself, but he also wanted Bianca back. He had learned long ago that you very, very rarely get what you want. If he didn’t find a way to burn normally… he cast a nervous glance at Kelsier, falling a bit behind as the thought occurred to him. What would Kelsier do if he thought Nico wasn’t trying? If Nico failed so many times in a row that the easiest explanation was just that Nico was purposefully wasting his time? No… Nico would have to figure out how to burn before that happened. Because that moment… Nico had a feeling that was when Kelsier would feel a bit more inclined to break his promise. And maybe not just the one. Maybe that would drive him to break all of the stupid promises he had made to Nico.
Although Nico was half tempted to ask, he kept the question locked up in his chest. It was best to keep the questions to a minimum, for now. Maybe one day he would ask Kelsier what happened if he failed to burn. He didn’t like the idea of being killed by him, but… if he proved a failed Allomancer, they might just choose to keep him locked up inside so he couldn’t spread any of their information or attack people they cared about. That fate seemed worse than death to Nico. Yet… Kelsier had said they’d avoid that, too. There were reasons Nico didn’t trust a word that came out of his mouth.
“I see,” he murmured softly, letting steel flare to life inside of him. He could sense all of the buildings and metal infrastructure, but he didn’t sense anyone else nearby. Most people wore metal. If they didn’t, they were either too poor to or hunting Mistborn. Or, in some cases, both. Nico couldn’t imagine anyone looking for either of them at the moment, especially since they hadn’t really done anything to prove they were Allomancers, other than talk about metals. Although… with bronze… anyone could see. He quickly extinguished his steel, looking to Kelsier.
“It seems…” he was halfway through the word when he shut his mouth, realizing it probably wouldn’t be wise to share a personal opinion – especially not a negative one – with Kelsier while they were still technically in a training session. Hopefully, Kelsier wouldn’t demand he finish what he started saying.

--
Time passed swiftly and incredibly slowly all at once. Nico was tired. Tired of being locked in his room, tired of going out night after night only to fail, tired of not even knowing why he was there. He was learning a little bit about some of the crew. Not enough to hurt them, of course, but… little things, things they probably didn’t expect him to pick up on. He noticed that people were careful about talking to Breeze, because he had a tendency to Soothe them. He noticed that Spook was never allowed to guard his door, though he didn’t quite understand why. Perhaps because he was the most likely to be able to overpower him, even without metals? He shook the thought away, pacing his room for what felt like the millionth time. He didn’t have metals, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try to burn anyway. He tried to imagine what flaring was like, then tried to imagine burning. He had only done it once, and only for a couple of moments before he’d failed. He didn’t know what to imagine.
Normally, he would have been speaking with whoever was guarding the door, but it was Breeze, and he didn’t approve of Kelsier’s plan. Not that Nico approved either, but… he didn’t trust Breeze. He didn’t want to be Soothed by him, and they couldn’t risk giving him copper all the time in order to avoid Breeze. He’d burn right through it. That, and he wasn’t going to just ask Kelsier to give him metals.
After a long moment, Nico sighed and moved back to the bed where he fished out the paper and charcoal he had been given and began sketching. It wasn’t very good – it was really, really bad, actually – but it was something to keep him busy while he waited. And it was the one thing he had left in the world that was his. The drawing didn’t look very much like Kelsier, but it did convey the same mood. The… the way the Survivor loomed over him, the intensity in the training sessions that Nico still didn’t understand, the sharp, knifelike smile. He would never have admitted it to anybody, but he was terrified of the Survivor. Training had gone smoothly… for now. The thought set Nico’s hands trembling, and he pushed the drawing supplies back under his bed – his bed, when had it become his instead of just the bed? – curling his knees closer to his chest. He’d broken down and eaten one of the apples Sazed had brought on his first day. It wasn’t poisoned. Nico thought it almost would have been easier if it had been. And he waited. Waited for another night of impossible training and a man whose patience was surely beginning to run out.

Nico didn’t know what to think. He tried, he tried as hard as he could, but he figured it was probably time he just… admit it wasn’t going to happen. He had made some progress that very first time, but since then… nothing. He was tired. He didn’t know what was wrong with him, only that something must be. Minos was right. He was impossible to train, and slowly but surely Kelsier was going to learn that as well. What would he do then? The question flicked across Nico’s mind, but he pushed it away. What did it matter if he failed to learn? He had no clue what Kelsier would do in either case. If he trained him, what then? It wasn’t like he could fully trust him if he kept training like he did. Fear was the only way to keep someone under your thumb, and Kelsier hadn’t even tried to make him afraid. He’d tried to quell his fear in fact. But if Kelsier didn’t manage to train him… what then? One day he would admit that it wasn’t going to work, and then decide he didn’t want to waste any more time on it. Then Nico would either be killed or locked up here for the foreseeable future. Maybe, if they started to trust him at all, he would be put to work cleaning up, or maybe even working under Clubs. Nico doubted that Clubs would like that much. Nico sighed, glancing at the door for another long moment, then glancing under the bed at his work. He didn’t have enough time to start another drawing. It was already starting to get dark.
And then Kelsier was there, and Nico stood up, swallowing as he moved to open the door. So Kelsier hadn’t given up yet. Nico could give him that, at least – he was quite possibly the most stubborn person that Nico had ever met. It was going to hurt them both, eventually. What would Kelsier be doing if he weren’t training Nico? Killing more children? Targeting more nobles, killing them one by one? As far as Nico was concerned, that was still the only way to create even standing.
It seemed that being with Kelsier’s crew, even for a short time, had already begun impacting his worldview. Either Kelsier’s crew wasn’t typical in the slightest, or the skaa weren’t nearly as inferior as Nico had been lead to believe. They were… they were just people. And Nico may not have been used to people, but… he could see it in them. See it in the way they interacted with each other when they thought he wasn’t watching. He doubted any of them would have been so open about their friendliness with each other if they knew someone was watching. Someone who could, in theory, use their friendships against them.
He chewed at the inside of his lip, watching Kelsier for a long moment. He didn’t say anything, just… waited. Waited to see what training had in store for the day.

Nico nodded, following Kelsier a little way behind, as usual. He knew that the number of times he would be allowed out were limited. As soon as Kelsier figured out that teaching him was impossible, that he was a lost cause… a grim smile touched Nico’s lips for just a moment. One way or another, Kelsier would be forced to break his promise. It wasn’t that Nico was looking forward to it (that would be insane), it was just… inevitable. And as much as he wanted to believe that he could be trained, that the crew could one day trust him enough to let him go if he promised not to hurt anyone… that was just a fantasy. He wasn’t going to learn to burn, and the crew was never going to trust him. It made sense. Nico may have been certain he couldn’t kill the Survivor even if he were properly trained, but that didn’t mean he was ever going to trust him or like him. This was an impossible situation, and though Nico found he was grateful to be alive… this wasn’t the sort of life anyone would want.
What threw Nico off the most was that Kelsier seemed almost unflappably confident. He didn’t understand how that was even possible given everything they were up against. Given how worthless their past several training sessions had been. Nico had stopped trying to convince Kelsier that he was trying, although he gave his all every training session. It just… it wasn’t good enough. And Nico knew that by flaring, he was eating up their metal supply quickly enough that he was certain the crew had noticed, even if they hadn’t said anything.
“Survivor,” he managed after a moment, hating how hesitant and small his voice sounded as it left him. He had adjusted to the idea that training would be different under Kelsier than it had been under Minos, but he was still incredibly alarmed every time Kelsier asked if he had any questions or anything he wanted to say. Most of the time, he just shook his head. Posing a question like this, out in the open… it was practically unheard of for him.
“May… I ask which metal is the least expensive to purchase?” He knew he should know that, but it hadn’t mattered to Minos, and Nico had been using stolen vials of metal from him since he had killed him. He hadn’t needed to purchase any to replenish. He had avoided markets and other places where they might come in handy, except when he’d been tracking Kelsier.
Did he think he could buy himself more time if he only burned the cheapest metal? Not really… it just felt like the right thing to do. Not for Kelsier. He didn’t care if people did the right thing for Kelsier. But Kelsier wasn’t the only Allomancer in the crew. If Nico was using metals that they needed that were more expensive… he tried to pretend he didn’t care, but he knew what the Inquisitors would do if they ever found the crew. Kelsier may have been the enemy, but Nico found he didn’t want to put his crew at risk, even in a hypothetical. Even Breeze.

As far as Nico was concerned, training was just wasting metals. He couldn’t save any metals if the mixture Kelsier gave him had all of them, but if he burned more tin… well, then Kelsier would possibly start bringing backup vials with more tin. It wasn’t so much that he cared about costing the crew money, it was that there were other Allomancers who needed metals, and even if Nico didn’t agree with a lot of the things Kelsier’s crew was doing… they were still people. And Inquisitors were still Inquisitors. If they got caught… well, if someone ran out of metals because of how much Nico was using to try to figure out how to burn… their deaths would be on him. His background may have been rough, but if there was one thing Nico di Angelo didn’t want to be, it was a killer. He didn’t know it was too late for that. If he had… then maybe he wouldn’t be trying so hard to convince Kelsier that he could be trained. Perhaps he wouldn’t be trying quite so hard to prolong his life, even just a little.
Nico shook his head, moving back towards the training area and holding his head down low like he hadn’t asked anything. It was the first question he had readily asked of his own volition, and as far as he was concerned, it would be the last. Nico’s consumption of metals was really the only thing that could put innocent people in danger. Him being out, him learning bit by bit about the crew… that could put them and the Survivor in danger, but… they weren’t innocent. Never mind that Hammond had kids somewhere and Spook was just a child, and a million other reasons Nico was fairly certain he didn’t want to bring about their deaths.
He shook the thought off, getting into position to try to burn. He didn’t know if wasting tin and tin alone was a good idea, but it seemed like a good place to start. It was cheapest, so probably easier to replace, and if there were other Allomancers about, they might notice him burning tin, but tin was probably the most widespread metal Nico had seen. Nobody looked at a tineye twice. Perhaps that was why Spook was so skittish.
Nico pushed that thought away, too. It was only an issue of people seeing him if he actually managed to burn something. Nico glanced up at Kelsier, unsure what, exactly, he wanted from him. Nico thought it might be a little bit helpful to have a couple of moments to collect his thoughts before trying to do what he knew others would soon call impossible. He didn’t know if Kelsier believed in taking a moment to catch your breath. Minos hadn’t. Nico thought he had been punished more often for that than for anything else. He was vulnerable when he stopped to breathe. So Nico’s eyes narrowed and he stopped picturing what it might be like to burn, instead launching right into flaring. As usual, it didn’t work. Nico tried to hide his frustration, but it erupted before he could stop it, pewter flaring in him to replace the tin until he managed to breathe for a few moments. While instinctual, his gut responses to needing metals weren’t burning anymore, if they had ever been. It was only flaring.

Nico wasn’t going to keep protesting that this was a bad idea. That seemed like a good way to get himself killed, and that was about the last thing he wanted to do. It would have been so much simpler if he had just died when he had been ready to. But he hadn’t, so here he was, face to face with Kelsier as he tried to something that he would have believed impossible if he hadn’t watched Kelsier do it just moments earlier. He must have burned normally at some point. He must have started out burning, because that was what people did when they first used Allomancy. In his first fight with Kelsier he must have been burning, but did that really count? The thought made him press his lips into a thin line, his brow creasing. His gaze didn’t move from straight ahead of him. He had to learn how to do this. He didn’t know what he would do with the ability – maybe he would let Kelsier turn him into a weapon – but he knew his life depended on him picking this up. A life in captivity was no life at all, and even if this was still a prison, at least he was allowed outside. At least Kelsier seemed to think he had some sort of potential. He was soon going to be proven wrong.
Stop. Nico froze, the metals dying down in his stomach as he turned to look at Kelsier. Had… he done something wrong? It seemed he had… Minos had never stopped for a good reason. Was this a test? Was he supposed to keep going? It was nearly impossible to tell whether he would be hurt for obeying a command when he was supposed to see that it was a test and he had failed, or when he would be hurt for not obeying, because he wasn’t going to get anywhere without Minos’ tutelage. This isn’t Minos, he reminded himself, which only served to make it worse. At least with Minos he could predict that almost anything he did would end up in him getting hurt, and then he would be told to learn from the mistake he made. Here he had absolutely no idea what would happen if he kept failing. He had no idea what getting in trouble looked like, what not doing it right would result in… Kelsier was unpredictable, as always. It made the entire experience all the more terrifying. Nico just kept waiting for him to snap, but it hadn’t happened yet.
“No emotions,” he repeated after a long moment, his eyes closing briefly as he tried to process that. He opened his mouth to say something else, then almost immediately shut it as he realized the words could spark something he didn’t want to consider. I can try to do that. Try wasn’t a word that had existed in Minos’ vocabulary. Either you failed, or you did it. He didn’t know how Kelsier felt about the word, but he didn’t want to find out. Instead, he took a deep breath in, trying to calm his emotions almost entirely. If he retreated into himself the way he had during Minos’ trainings… would he be level headed enough to burn normally?

Nico didn’t know how not to feel emotion that strong. He didn’t know how to exist without a fire in his soul. He was intense, he felt things deeply, and when he flared it was his emotions driving the fire in his stomach. It was fear, fear that Minos would hurt him, would punish him for not burning well enough. Well enough, he knew now, meant flaring. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t natural. But he’d learned to burn with that fear. It was anger, it was a desire for revenge, the need to be strong enough to kill the Survivor of Hathsin. Nico had come close… he had come so close, but in the end… he had saved the Survivor’s life. Some brother he was, unable to even avenge Bianca. That was all his father had asked him to do. It was all he had wanted to do for years… and here he was, taking instructions form a murderer like this was how the world was supposed to go. It wasn’t. Nico hated Kelsier… he hated him, and he needed him. He wanted to burn properly. He wanted to use metals without it taking so much from him, without it hurting afterwards.
Tin. Tin was cheapest, tin was likely easiest, and he still had a little bit left. He just needed to burn it. Just… it wasn’t that simple. He wanted to stick with tin. It was the easiest to replace, it meant he was costing Kelsier and his crew less (he wasn’t sure when he had started thinking of Kelsier more in terms of the other Mistborn’s name rather than as ‘the Survivor,’ but it was a change he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with). The thing was, he had burned tin for a very long time. He had muscle memory of how to use it… so it was probably going to take longer to learn how to burn properly. He switched it off, instead focusing on the bronze in the pit of his stomach. He flared, eyes narrowing at the sight of Kelsier’s own bronze burning. It was… it was a lot of information all at once, almost enough to overload him.
“F(oops!),” Nico muttered, hoping Kelsier was far away enough that he hadn’t heard the word. I can’t do it, he wanted to yell, but he wasn’t supposed to be getting emotional. And he figured giving up on that level would be enough to set Kelsier over the edge.
“That… didn’t seem to make any difference,” he said instead, fighting hard to keep his tone even.

Nico blinked, extinguishing the bronze and turning to look at Kelsier. He wasn’t sure what Kelsier meant, at first. Was it a trick? Was he asking for something else that Nico was supposed to understand? Not for the first time, Kelsier’s reminder that he wasn’t Minos came to mind. He wasn’t Minos. He trained differently. There were different rules, here, and Nico had to start learning them, even if that meant he was going to be punished a lot as he figured them out. So far, he hadn’t been punished too harshly, though he knew he had broken some of the unspoken rules. The difficulty was that they were so different from Minos’ rules that Nico had a hard time picking up on them unless they were directly stated – and Kelsier had even seemed slightly put out by the fact that Nico obeyed him readily. Wasn’t that a good thing? Wasn’t that what training was supposed to be?
Flaring was a part of him. Asking him to describe it was like asking him what it felt like to walk, or breathe, what it felt like to eat… he hadn’t gone a day without flaring in a long time, at least until he had allowed himself to be captured by Kelsier’s crew. He could barely remember the days before he Snapped, mostly because thinking of Bianca made the tears rise up, and Minos had told him again and again and again that crying was a weakness. It would be exploited. So Nico had learned to stop crying, had learned to forget the things that hurt.
“I guess,” he managed, trying to get his words to sort themselves out in his head. “Flaring is like… it feels warm. In my stomach. It’s like… well, I know why they call it burning. It’s like there’s a fire, and it’s hot enough that it could scald you, if you don’t treat it with respect. And it feels like keeping that fire alive, even as it starts to get tiring, even as it starts to wear down. Because it also means… it means feeling things. The things that matter. It means the feeling of the ground beneath my feet and… and mists that you can see through, and it’s not feeling pain or tiredness. It’s… it’s like being alive.”

Flaring had never hurt. It had been dangerous, probably. It threatened to consume him, sometimes. Nico wanted to ask Kelsier if flaring ever hurt him – because as much as Kelsier was talking about burning like it was better, he clearly knew how to flare, and when to flare. It was a tool in his arsenal that he knew how to use. Nico doubted he would have done that if it hurt him. The difference was that flaring was the only way Nico had to really feel normal anymore. Sometimes the light was so bright it hurt. But he would rather be blinded by too bright light than live blinded by an inability to sense anything around him, the feeling that anyone could sneak up on him and he might have no idea. He felt… almost claustrophobic without flaring tin. He felt frail without burning pewter. He didn’t know how to describe flaring, he just knew how to describe it in relation to how he felt when he wasn’t doing it. Flaring made him feel like he had been alive. He didn’t know how he had lived in the dark for so long before he had Snapped. He didn’t know how he had lived being that powerless.
“I don’t know how to feel safe.” The words were out before Nico could stop them. He hadn’t meant to say them. He hadn’t meant to think them. He looked up at Kelsier, eyes wide as he waited for the punishment. The admonishment that he should never show weakness. Perhaps a sneer that got its message across better than words ever could: you’ll feel safe when you deserve to feel safe. When you’ve earned that for yourself. Or maybe just the cold reminder that he would only be safe when he was strong enough to protect himself. Not yet. He wasn’t ready yet. Too weak. Too untrained. Too small. Incapable. Incompetent.
Somehow, Nico managed to stay standing up, eyes closing for a long moment as he gathered himself. When he opened them again, dark eyes met hazel.
“I… am that fire,” he whispered, the words barely audible. “The one that might kill you… the one that might help. You think you can tame me. Minos… Minos tried, and look where he ended up. I don’t know how to put myself out. I don’t know how to be a campfire or… or a lantern.” He fell silent, aware he had shared more than he intended to. Maybe he flared because he found companionship with the danger. Perhaps there were some who were meant to burn bright but burn out quickly, taking as much of the forest with them as they could.
It wasn’t the wildfire’s fault for being started. But it couldn’t change its nature once it sparked.

Nico wasn’t sure what he could get out of burning normally. Safety… he shook his head a little bit at the thought. There was no safety for him. He was in the middle of enemy territory wherever he went. He was a nobleman, but he had failed to protect his own. He had been trained to hurt people, and then he’d become a murderer. He couldn’t go back to court. He couldn’t join the Skaa. The world wasn’t made for him. He wondered distantly if it ever had been. If there was ever any path he could have taken that would have landed him somewhere other than here. What would have happened if he had killed Kelsier that very first night? He knew it wasn’t possible, but he couldn’t help thinking about it. His hand moved to his chest, the thin scar underneath his shirt, just above his heart.
The point was, he didn’t understand the point of burning. But he wanted to stay alive, and the only way he could see to do that was to figure out how to burn. Was to complete Kelsier’s training and see what happened at the end of it. He was just… he was tired. He was tired of being on guard all the time. He was tired of not knowing where he stood. He was tired of hurting… he was tired of relying on metals to feel alive.
“There is no safety for me,” he admitted after a long moment, voice soft. It was the truth, as he saw it. Maybe one day Kelsier and his crew would be dead. Maybe then Nico would be allowed to go free. But he still wouldn’t be safe. “I think,” he managed after another moment, hugging his arms close to his body, “that the only people who get to feel safe are the nobility.”
Nico’s gaze caught on Kelsier’s scars and he had to force himself not to look away. Who was he to talk about safety? Who was he to feel trapped? Hathsin was far worse than anything he had survived.
“I’m surprised you think me capable of having a heart at all,” Nico commented softly, lifting his eyes once again to meet Kelsier’s. “Given your opinion of the nobility.” He wanted to tell Kelsier that he was wrong. That whatever was left of Nico’s heart was shrunken and bleeding, that he wasn’t sure it would ever beat properly again. It was Allomancy that kept him alive. Allomancy that gave him a purpose. Nico was forged to be someone else’s weapon. If it was his heart that burned… if that was what made him a fire… then Minos had done his best to extinguish that and ignite a new one. One that could be tamed, in theory. But one that Nico couldn’t control.

“I never said the nobility were safe,” Nico replied quietly, shaking his head a little bit. “I just… they… we don’t grow up as scared as the Skaa do. I mean… the nobility feel invincible, like nothing could ever happen to them.” He didn’t know whether to identify himself with them or not. He had been noble, once. He was still technically noble, though he had no home in their courts or houses. He was a tool for the nobility. He didn’t know if that made him one of them, though Minos had seemed to insist that it did. That was how he had taught Nico that the Skaa were inferior. That they were barely human. Nico shifted uncomfortably at the memory. He had wanted to believe it, because it meant that he wasn’t the lowest of the low. He was ashamed of that thought, now. He had met Skaa over the past several days… Skaa who were better than him, Skaa who were more human, more alive, more deserving of everything Nico had been given at birth than anyone Nico had known growing up. Not that he would ever say that out loud, but… Hammond and Sazed especially. They were better than most of the nobility Nico had ever met, even if he did disagree with many of their core tenets.
Nico knew better than most how dangerous Kelsier could be. He had survived. He had a feeling he was the only person who had ever met the business end of Kelsier’s knife to do that. He wasn’t supposed to survive. But he’d been given pewter. He’d survived. He shrunk in on himself, not quite managing to look at Kelsier.
“You know what I meant,” Nico managed after a long moment, unsure how to respond to the cruelty that danced lightly in Kelsier’s voice. Did he even realize it was there? It was hard to imagine Kelsier not being perfectly in control of every facet of himself he presented. If he was cruel, it had to be intentional.
“Of course we have hearts, but I meant metaphorical ones. The ones that can be fire rather than just… muscles. Or whatever hearts actually are.”
He shifted a little bit, letting his gaze drift towards the sky.
Kelsier would find out that Nico’s heart had been stolen from him soon enough. The death of it had started with Bianca’s death, but Nico was forced to admit that most of its degradation had nothing to do with Kelsier. He was a fire. He would burn and destroy unchecked. But he wasn’t his own fire. He had no heart left to distinguish him as anything other than Minos’ shadow.

Nico didn’t think he was invincible. He knew he wasn’t untouchable… he hadn’t ever been allowed to grow up without feeling terrified. He had been so certain for so long that he was nobility. That he was part of the better side of society, that he was better than the Skaa. It had only taken a few days with Kelsier to realize that he wasn’t that different from the Skaa. That maybe, just maybe, they were a lot better than he was. Nobody in this world had freedom. Not the Skaa. Not the nobility. Kelsier was the closest Nico had ever seen, and even he was under the thumb of the Lord Ruler and the Inquisitors. There was no such thing as freedom. There was no such thing as hope, no matter how hard Kelsier tried to get others to believe there was. Maybe, for the Skaa, there was. Maybe there was a future where the Skaa could be free, but even the Survivor of Hathsin couldn’t take down the Lord Ruler.
Nico didn’t know what to think of the Lord Ruler. He had been touted as this… this great being, someone who had saved the world, someone who had chosen the nobility from among his friends, who had given them favors because of the good they had done for him. Nico didn’t feel very favored. When he had spent dark nights hiding from Minos, cheeks wet with tears that he couldn’t allow anyone to hear, the Lord Ruler hadn’t come to save him. Nobody had. As far as Nico was concerned, there were no gods. The Lord Ruler was just a man, but he was a damn hard man to kill.
What was Nico, now? He didn’t know how to answer that question. He didn’t think he was noble, but he wasn’t Skaa. He thought he was likely something worse than either. He was just… a weapon, and one that hadn’t been sharpened properly. He was a weapon that couldn’t kill. He might have been a wildfire, but if he was, it wasn’t his heart that was burning. He wasn’t sure his heart was capable of something that powerful. He wasn’t sure it ever had been.
“I don’t know if I believe you,” Nico admitted after a long moment, barely able to stop himself from flinching back as he met Kelsier’s eyes to see his reaction. Minos might have struck him for questioning him, but it didn’t seem like Kelsier was likely to do that.
“Should… I try to burn again?” He asked after a moment, tone obviously uncomfortable. He didn’t know what to make of this training. He didn’t know what to make of Kelsier in general. He wanted to learn, but for what? So he could be taken down later? He didn’t see how training him was a good idea. He didn’t think they would ever trust each other. This… training… it was just a façade as Kelsier figured out another solution. They both knew it, but neither gave voice to it.