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

Nico wasn’t sure he would ever be used to seeing the stars. It was as though the whole world had changed just by virtue of knowing that the stars were there. How could he go back to living as he had when the stars were right there? He breathed out, wiping his eyes one more time. He felt foolish crying in front of Kelsier, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that now. This moment felt safe. He didn’t want to leave it. He didn’t want to go back to the version of the world where there we no stars, where there was no reason to trust Kelsier, where… where he was just a noble boy who had ended up in the wrong part of the city. He didn’t’ know how different his childhood had been from other noble children. He didn’t truly accept that there were children who hadn’t gone through training like he had. It seemed likely that most of them had learned to burn instead of flare, but the idea that they had never lived in constant fear was foreign to him.
“Did you ask him to protect it or carry it?” Nico asked, fully aware that he likely wasn’t going to get an answer. It was a personal question, but he was curious. Curiosity didn’t seem like a crime in this moment.
Nico blinked up at the sky, eyes tracing the outline of the dog. He thought he saw the Watcher properly, but he wasn’t sure. Hopefully, that was good enough.
I don’t want to go back home, Nico told the sky silently. I don’t… I want the Survivor to be right. I want there to be a future. There was more, but Nico wasn’t ready to admit it to himself yet. I needed to tell someone. I need someone to share that hope with me. So… thanks, I guess. He felt a bit foolish thinking at the sky, but… whether it was real or not didn’t matter. What mattered was that there was somewhere else for his thoughts to be stored rather than just trapped in his own head. He was sharing it with the Watcher, and if not him, then with the universe.

Nico knew they were only lights. He knew that they were untouchable, unreachable from here, but… that didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were there, that they existed as a promise that there was more to the world than there was on the surface. Nico didn’t know about green plants and flowers. He didn’t know about the animals that used to inhabit Scadrial. He didn’t know how much the Lord Ruler had taken away when he had made himself a god. What he did know was that the stars knew a world before the Lord Ruler, and one way or another they would know a world after him. Nico didn’t know if he would be alive to see a world after. He didn’t know if it would be much different from the world they lived in now – it was impossible to imagine a world without ash, for example – but at least it would be more fair.
Nico didn’t ask Kelsier to elaborate. He hadn’t really asked for either. He had just… shared a secret because he needed someone else to know it. He wasn’t really asking for it to be protected, or for it to be carried for him. There were some secrets that were meant to be shared. Some secrets where sharing them felt like a sip of cold water on a hot day. This was one such secret. For the first time, Nico allowed himself to believe that there might be a future. For the first time, he began to imagine what the end of a day would be like rather than assuming he wouldn’t be around to see it. Whether that would be a mistake… well, he supposed he would find out eventually.

Nico didn’t know if Kelsier had informed the crew. He assumed he probably had – they would be worrying by now if he hadn’t, likely. It was about the time they usually started heading back after training. Training rarely lasted more than an hour or two, especially because Nico wasn’t making very much progress. It felt like they had been looking at the stars for eons. It felt like they had only been looking at the stars for seconds. This moment existed completely out of time. It felt like it belonged to a different world entirely.
Was there a version of the world where Nico would one day tell Kelsier what he had told the Watcher? It seemed unlikely. He may have started to become more sympathetic to Kelsier and the rest of the crew, but that didn’t mean he trusted them. They didn’t like him, and they didn’t trust him. For the most part. Hammond didn’t seem to mind his presence, but that was because he was a child. Everyone else seemed to dislike him. Nico told himself he was perfectly fine reciprocating the feeling, but the more time he spent with them, the less certain he was that was the case.
“Thank you,” Nico whispered, forcing himself to sit up. He had to crane his neck to look up at the stars, but he didn’t think he minded. “If… you hadn’t shown me, then I never would have known they were there.” How many times had he flared tin when stepping out into the mists? How many times had he cringed away from the too-bright moon, not wanting to look up because of it? How many times had he avoided seeing these? He had tried to conserve his tin after he had killed Minos, and he hadn’t been allowed outside before then, but… it still seemed unbelievable that he had missed knowing they were there for that long.

Nico wanted to believe that this was a turning point. He didn’t know it was his decision whether it was going to be or not… it was as much Kelsier’s decision, at least. How were they going to see each other when training rolled around again? It would be easy enough to just go back to the way they had been before – Nico terrified to make a mistake, Kelsier being the exact opposite of what Nico expected of him. He didn’t trust Kelsier, still. The stars were beautiful, but they didn’t change that. Kelsier was still the man who had killed Bianca. Nico knew there was more to him than he had believed before, but he couldn’t erase that fact. He couldn’t allow himself to trust or even like Kelsier. But he couldn’t go back to training and just… pretend that this night hadn’t happened. Perhaps they would figure it out as they went.
“If I had looked myself,” Nico murmured, looking for other patterns in the stars. There were patterns that had been seen by people for thousands and thousands of years, likely. Was Nico identifying the same patterns? It seemed unlikely, but he didn’t know. He wanted to hear those stories, but he doubted there was anyone alive other than perhaps the Lord Ruler who knew them. He didn’t know there were still Terris Keepers, he didn’t know that there were people who could store that information. If he were to learn that… he may have grilled Sazed about what different religions said about the stars.
“If I had looked myself, I never would have known any of the stories,” Nico finished, tracing the outline of the dog with his eyes. The stories were part of what made it feel more magic.
“Where do they go during the day?” Nico breathed, tearing his gaze away to meet Kelsier’s.

“Oh,” Nico echoed, still not quite looking away from the stars. They were there. They had been there the whole time, and Nico had never known. Bianca had been Mistborn. Had she ever looked up at the stars? Did she know they were there? Were there times when Hades had taken her up to the roof of Keep di Angelo and pointed them out, telling her stories and making her promise to never tell anyone else about the stars? It was hard to imagine Hades being that fatherly. Perhaps that was because most of Nico’s memories of him were stained by his last interaction with his father. The blooming realization that he had failed Hades. That his father blamed him for Bianca’s death. That he was the one who should have died instead. Hades hadn’t even realized he was Mistborn yet, and he’d been happy to toss his son out because he hadn’t been the right one.
Nico pushed the thoughts away. He didn’t want to go back home. He didn’t know if he wanted to make Hades proud or not. He… he wanted to make someone proud, as most children did, but… he had come to the conclusion that Hades wasn’t worth it. Or maybe it was that Hades had been right all along, that Nico wasn’t good enough to be his son.
“I can’t believe so few people know,” he managed, pulling his knees to his chest. The tears threatened to fall again, but he knew he couldn’t let him. He didn’t want to cry. Not here. Not now. He had already let the tears fall. He had already allowed himself to seem weak in front of Kelsier. He needed to stay strong.
“I never… really believed in poetry. I was too young to understand it,” he whispered, unsure if he was talking to himself or to Kelsier, “but… this feels like poetry. That they’re still here, all the time, but… you can only see them when it’s dark.”

Nico didn’t care if Bianca had never told him about the stars, as long as she had gotten the chance to see them herself. He thought she would have liked them even more than he did. She had always been the more introspective of the two of them, but maybe that was because she had basically been placed in charge of raising Nico when their mother had died. They had to pretend that Persephone was their mother, though Persephone clearly resented them for it. She hadn’t had any hand in raising either of them. That had fallen to Bianca. Nico shook the thought away, trying to keep himself from trembling. He couldn’t imagine the cruelty present in a world where Bianca could have seen the stars but had never had anyone to tell her to look up. Nico didn’t know if there was a life after death. He didn’t know if there was any chance Bianca was watching them now, listening to Kelsier explain the stars. If she was… would she look up now?
I have another secret, Nico thought at the Watcher, pulling his arms tight across his chest, I’m angry that Bianca died instead of me. I’m angry that I’m still here to see the things she would’ve wanted to see. I’m angry that she doesn’t get to be the one giving you secrets.
“That’s what Bianca used to say about our mother,” Nico whispered, gaze locked on the sky. “She was wrong. When people die… they’re gone. They’re not there but invisible. They just… they’re gone.” There was a little bit of indignance and petulance in Nico’s voice that he hadn’t intended, but he couldn’t take it back now.

Nico hadn’t ever given much thought to the sort of world they lived in. It was the only world he had ever known. He hadn’t had the chance to consider if there might be a better option out there. He didn’t like that there were Skaa being killed in the street, but he didn’t know that there was another option. That was just… how the world was. The Skaa were different from the nobility, and if the nobility wanted to kill the Skaa, there was nobody who could stop them. Of course, spending more time with Kelsier and his crew had proven beyond a doubt that the Skaa didn’t deserve to be killed like that any more than Bianca had deserved to die at the end of Kelsier’s knife. The thing was… the world wasn’t fair. It was never going to be fair. Nico didn’t think that someone like Kelsier was capable of making it fair. The Survivor had killed Bianca. He had set Nico down the path he was on now. He had created the unfairness in Nico’s voice. He may have thought he was making things fair, but all he was doing was making the nobility experience the lack of fairness for the first time in their pampered lives. The lives of the nobility weren’t nearly as pampered as Kelsier seemed to think they were. Did he know what the nobility did to their children to see if they were Allomancers? Did he know about the type of training that noble children went through? Or was that something Nico had wrong in his head because Minos had lied to him to make him stay in line for as long as he had? It was hard to tell. Nico was tired of seeing the world through Minos’ lens. He just didn’t know how to replace it with his own.
“How are the stars still there when it’s day, though?” Nico asked, staring up at the sky and saying a quiet prayer of thanks that Kelsier had given him as much tin as he had. It would be easy to flare through this amount of tin quickly, but Nico still had enough to keep looking. Clearly, Kelsier had been thinking ahead. It was oddly thoughtful of him. Nico had a hard time balancing the thoughtful Kelsier in his head with the image of the violent, bloody Survivor who had broken into Keep di Angelo that night and claimed a life that deserved to keep moving forward.
Nico was silent for a long moment, looking between the sky and the ground, and then at the buildings surrounding them. None of this could be a lie. This… this had to be the truth. Nico could see it. He could feel it. He would be able to see the stars again tomorrow night, if Kelsier was right. So long as Kelsier wasn’t’ lying and trying to hide it.
“It’s hard to trust,” he admitted, after a moment, his voice barely audible. The spell hadn’t quite been broken. “It’s… it’s like Minos taught me that the ground was made of a material that disappears when you step on it, and I just stepped out to find solid floor. It’s hard to trust that when you’ve been told for years that the floor will disappear if you step too hard.”

Once again, Nico wished he could touch them. It seemed so easy… all he would have to do was get up high enough, and maybe he would be able to reach the stars. Maybe he would be able to float among them, and Scadrial would be nothing but a bad dream. Was that what came after death? Did you get to float among the stars? Did you become a star yourself? Nico didn’t think death could be all that bad if that was what happened after, but he knew it was just wishful thinking. If something that beautiful weren’t available in life, there was no way that it was going to be available in death. As far as Nico was aware, whatever happened after death had to be worse than anything that could happen in life, otherwise people wouldn’t be so upset about it. The most likely possibility was that you just… stop existed. Nico wasn’t sure he would have minded that. He didn’t, of course, want to die. He may not have seen a future for himself, but he didn’t want to cut anything that he might have short. Kelsier saw a way out of this. If he kept training, it seemed possible that Nico would see the way out, too. The stars… they were the closest thing Nico had ever found to the possibility of a future. They were hope itself.
“I hope someone finds out, one day,” Nico whispered, looking back up at the stars. “If… if the world was fair, then the Lord Ruler would make everyone with tin look up at the sky. And then they would have to make art and music and try to describe the stars to people who will never see them. And people would be able to figure out what they are and how they stay in the sky for no matter how long.” His voice was soft, and he kept his chin tilted towards the sky as he finished speaking. It was a few moments before he dared look at Kelsier again.
“I didn’t mean that literally,” he informed Kelsier, voice quiet. “I just mean… it feels like everything he taught me was a lie. I don’t know how to tell what’s true and what’s not, and… and I need the stars to be here every night. I want to be able to see them every night, even the nights we don’t have training. Please.” He didn’t know if Kelsier would be able to accommodate that. He doubted Kelsier would be willing. Still… he had to hope. It wasn’t like he was asking all that much. He wasn’t asking for a window; he was just asking for a pinch of tin and five minutes outside. The stars were real. He could see them. There was proof that they existed. Now if only everything else were that simple…

Sazed had yet to pitch any religions to Nico, but Nico had heard the others talking enough to know that was what Sazed specialized in. Keepers weren’t supposed to exist anymore, but that was one thing Minos hadn’t turned around in Nico’s head. He had never mentioned Keepers. It was almost as though he believed they didn’t exist, so why would he need to educate his weapon about them? As far as Nico was concerned, all Terrismen were supposed to be docile and subservient. That was the implication that Nico had gotten from Minos. Minos had kept Terris servants. Nico shuddered at the thought. They had always seemed eager to please, ready to do whatever it was that Minos had asked of them. After interacting with Sazed… Nico couldn’t help the way his thoughts wandered. What exactly had Minos done to guarantee their service? If he treated his prized weapon the way he had treated Nico, what did he do with his expendable and ever rotating cast of servants? The thought was sickening, though Nico tried not to let it show on his face or ruin the moment. The world they lived in wasn’t fair. Nico had known that for a long time, but he was only now discovering the depth of what that meant.
If Sazed were to tell him about a religion involving the stars, Nico likely wouldn’t hesitate before trying it on for size. He had believed in the Lord Ruler for so long… the Lord Ruler was nothing but a cruel man who wanted power. There was no denying that, even if Nico wasn’t certain that the Survivor was much better. Perhaps all people were inherently bad. It was a devastating way to think, but Nico saw no evidence to the contrary. Except, perhaps, the stars.
“Thank you,” Nico whispered, casting his gaze back up one last time. He didn’t know how much time they had, but… he wanted to stay here for as long as possible. Maybe he would be able to get closer when he had metals. Maybe if he could flare iron he would get close enough to touch them. Maybe Nico would be the one to find out what they were. It seemed unlikely, but in the middle of the night, surrounded by things that shouldn’t have existed… it felt possible. Maybe Nico deserved for something impossible to happen. Just this once, maybe he deserved something good.
“My tin is getting low,” he admitted quietly, looking over at Kelsier with wide eyes. “Can… we stay until it runs out?” Two requests in one night. How long until Kelsier snapped? Still... under the stars, Nico didn’t mind pushing his luck just a little bit.

--
It had taken Nico a while to learn the general schedule of the guards. There were some people who were more likely to be guarding him at certain times, but it was clear that they switched it up so he didn’t get too used to it. If he became accustomed to their routine, then he might be able to find a way to break out. So even who was guarding him wasn’t a certainty. It wasn’t very difficult to figure out, though. Hammond usually said hi before he sat down on the other side of the door. Sazed tended to pace more than any of the others. Kelsier himself rarely guarded the door, but when he did there were usually hushed conversations between him and the other crew members. There was no question who was the leader. Breeze had a heavier step when he walked to come guard the door. It was often difficult to tell the difference between Dockson and Clubs. Neither man liked him, but they had similar strides. Clubs breathed a little bit louder than Dockson did, in general. The only one who had never guarded the door was the boy who seemed to be around Nico’s age. A little older, maybe? It was hard to tell. Nico wasn’t entirely sure why the boy had never guarded him. Maybe he wasn’t allowed. Or maybe he just didn’t want to, and they all agreed that Nico was a big enough threat that they didn’t want to risk another child. If they thought he was going to kill the boy, though… Nico shook his head.
It was Breeze outside, now. Slowly, Nico made his way to the door, uncertain what his goal was. He was getting sick of his small room, sick of being cramped up in it except when the sun went down. He had never before had time to worry about loneliness, but it was all he could think of now.
“You’re… Breeze, right?” His voice was soft and uncertain, as though even he didn’t know why he had dared open his mouth to speak.

Nico might have been slightly more unnerved that the man behind the door wanted to kill him if it weren’t for the fact that everyone in the building had reason to want him dead. Kelsier had promised not to kill him. Sazed and Hammond would prefer not to see him killed in cold blood. He didn’t know if they would be okay with him being killed in another situation, but he wasn’t exactly going to ask. Breeze, Clubs, and Dockson had made their distaste clear. They didn’t want him here, and they didn’t want him free. Even if most of them probably didn’t want to say it out loud, they wanted him dead. Breeze, at least, had been willing to express the sentiment out loud when he’d been talking to Hammond. Spook… well, Nico didn’t know what Spook wanted or how he felt about him. Spook didn’t visit, and he wasn’t exactly forthcoming. Nico shook his head of the thought, instead trying to figure out what, exactly, he wanted to say to Breeze. He had just spoken because he didn’t really want to be alone. Breeze… wasn’t exactly the solution to that.
“You’re a Soother,” Nico said after a moment, the word still unfamiliar to him. He hadn’t even known brass was a metal that could be burned a few weeks before. It wasn’t exactly something he knew how to talk about, and he doubted that Breeze wanted to talk to him about anything that could be used against the crew anyway. Unless… a terrible thought occurred to Nico in the moment. One he wasn’t sure he wanted to pursue. One that would make things clear. Or… clearer.
“What does it feel like to be Soothed?”

Nico had no concept of how bloodthirsty the average person was. Hades had certainly not minded spilling blood when it was Skaa. Minos had centered his life around finding the perfect weapon to kill his enemies. To give him power. That had been Nico, until Nico had killed Minos. And Kelsier… well, Nico thought that Kelsier was a weapon in his own right. He was just a weapon who had learned how to wield himself. Kelsier was no stranger to bloodshed, so it wasn’t much of a leap to assume that the rest of his crew was just as bloodthirsty. Only… Nico wasn’t sure Kelsier had killed anyone since he had been taken in. It seemed the Mistborn wasn’t as bloodthirsty as Nico had first thought. Or maybe he was just better at hiding it. Maybe he was good at killing without getting a single speck of blood on him. He’d been sprayed by Bianca’s when she’d died… Nico pushed the thought away.
And then… well, there weren’t any thoughts to push away. It was like his mind was blank, like there was nothing there other than an oppressive emptiness. Like it wasn’t Nico in his head, not really. It was… it was someone else, and he couldn’t dredge up the ability to care about what his actions did, or the pain he felt, or…
Piercing, dark eyes almost looking through him, goading him, asking why he wasn’t angry enough to kill Kelsier, even in practice. And there was no anger to build on. There was nothing, just… just emptiness. Like Nico’s head had been plunged underwater and he was hearing everything happening overhead in a muffled, indistinct way. He gasped for breath, hands flying to his ears as though that could block out the feeling, block out Minos’ cold, infuriating voice, the way it pulled at him and challenged him, and kept him docile and unlikely to fight back… tears burned at his eyes, but they weren’t enough to ground him. It was like free-falling, knowing there was nothing there to catch him, not even being able to rely on the part of him that could stay connected to reality…
His breath came in hard, uneven gasps as he fought through the haze in his mind, battling the storm that was rolling in from who knew where.

Nico had experienced panic attacks before. They were a side effect of living with Minos. He had spent long hours learning how to suppress them, learning how to feel them when they were coming on, learning how to pretend like nothing was wrong at all. This was different. The Soothing had been a shock. He hadn’t been prepared for what felt like an attack. He hadn’t been prepared to be flung back to Minos’ training, to reach for feelings that weren’t there, to feel like there was nothing in his mind other than the orders and the need to keep going. It would hurt later, he knew. He always knew it would hurt later. Minos never let it hurt in the moment. Well… mentally, at least. The physical pain was Nico’s to deal with until he learned how to flare pewter. Until he learned how to manage the physical pain himself. He closed his eyes, trying to ground himself to the moment. Trying to stop the ragged gasps of his breath. He didn’t know where he was. Logically, he knew. He hadn’t left the room Kelsier’s crew had set aside for him. He was leaning against the same door Breeze was. He was fine. He wasn’t in immediate danger. But logic couldn’t fight the wave of memories that crashed down around him. The way his body curled in on itself and tried to flare any metals he had. He didn’t have much, just the tiny bit of iron that had made it into the water source. For a brief second he could see lines of blue surrounding him before the world thrust itself back into a nightmare.
Breeze’s voice didn’t feel real. Nico could hear it, but it was muffled like it was coming from somewhere far away. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to even understand it, let alone respond to it.

Nico closed his eyes, doing his best to make the memories go away. It seemed that they didn’t want to listen to him. He tried to keep breathing, tried to remind himself of where he was, but… it didn’t really help that he wasn’t exactly somewhere safe now, either. Kelsier wasn’t going to kill him, but that didn’t mean nobody else was going to try. He forced himself to breathe, tried to focus himself on the room he was in. On the sound coming from outside the door. There wasn’t much – Breeze was quiet, except for the sound of his breathing, but it was more real than what was going on inside Nico’s head. At least… that was what he tried to tell himself. He wasn’t actually sure that was the case. His head was full of thoughts and memories that felt far more real than the truth.
The terror seemed to ebb just a little, letting Nico feel the pressure of his fingernails against his palms, the hard floor under him. His breath seemed to ease just a little bit – enough that he could start to think straight.