Work Text:
The day Pike came under Kaeso goe Aper’s purview was the day his world ended.
He didn’t know it at the time. All he knew was that he’d been moved after the disastrous death of his trainer—that he’d narrowly avoided being blamed for the escape of the murderer because he was one of the lowest ranked people there. Nobody remembered in the chaos that he’d been the one to distract his superiors. He was glad he’d been given the prestigious position to be under a Primus before he’d finished training. It meant security. It meant he’d been acknowledged.
He was seventeen when he was given his first mission, with an older Frumentarius to guide him. A simple assassination, something any of them should have been able to easily accomplish.
It went bad, naturally, because luck had never been a strong suit of Pike’s. His senior died in a sudden ambush by rebel forces in the area, and Pike escaped death only by pretending to be a new conscript who’d been forced into the role. The rebels took him with them. And for a moment, Pike considered taking the way out. It would have been so easy.
He couldn’t do that to Elphina, though. She’d been abandoned enough.
The only way out was through. If he returned to Garlemald with nothing to show for it, he risked being branded a traitor. Simply completing the assassination would not be enough, either—his senior had been Garlean. He knew what would happen if he returned like that.
And so Pike did something worse than a simple assassination: he destroyed a rebellion from the inside.
It was easy enough—people, Pike had learned from his time on the streets, were careless when they were confident. It only took a little wide-eyed appreciation, playing up the cute angle (or his beauty, sometimes), and people spilled their secrets like he’d sliced their bellies open.
Blood never touched Pike’s hands. He decimated the rebellion in a matter of weeks.
When he was done, Pike went to the nearest garrison and surrendered, asking someone to contact his commanding officer. Aper was there within days, and Pike knelt before him in a dusty, rarely used room.
Aper listened to his story, delivered in monotone because Pike had long since stopped connecting to his body. He sat, and listened, and Pike felt fear creep along his spine at a distant remove, until Aper placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled.
“I knew you’d do well, eir L’oatel,” he said.
(Pike hates to admit it now, but he’d been so pleased at the time. He hadn’t had a kind word of praise since his father died.)
Pike got more and more missions. He excelled at every one.
Kaeso praised him after each and every one, eyes warm with approval. Pike flourished, his confidence soaring after each word. It made it easy to pretend the shaking in his hands after killing was just a come down from adrenaline, that the twisting in his gut watching rebellions fall was something bad he’d eaten. Kaeso’s approval was a drug and Pike was hooked.
Pike got special training. He learned how to kill more and more efficiently, until he could find fifty ways to kill a man in any room. He learned to become anyone, to pitch his voice to sound like he was from anywhere. He learned how to use his body to make men and women want him more than they wanted to keep their secrets.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses. When he was a year into being a Frumentarius, they took him to a private room and made a mage shove electricity into his body until it stopped hurting. It took days, and he thought he may die by the end. At the end, Kaeso came to him and took one of his hands, looking paternal and so, so sad.
“I wish I didn’t have to do this to you,” he said. “But I want you to be the best you can be.”
Pike forgave him. After all, the pain was already gone.
He kept succeeding, climbing the ranks until he was given only the hardest, most delicate missions. He saw his sister more and more, getting to spend weeks watching her play and sing and generally be happy and healthy. Her illness had been fully managed by the medication she received. It was everything Pike had wanted for her, and that more than any word of praise made him comfortable.
Then came the day he turned nineteen.
Kaeso, he—
He—
If Pike thought about it, he thought he might break. So he doesn’t.