Darling had tried to push Nykyrian’s arm off so that he could breathe, but it was useless. Nyk was too strong. All he could do was cough and wheeze.

Until Nykyrian saw the original scar Ryn had given him that covered the entire left half of his face, and the bruises on his cheek and black eye from his uncle that still, three days later, looked like shit.

Before Darling could regain his senses and to his eternal shame, Nyk had yanked his shirt up to see the other bruises and scars that covered his torso. Then, he’d grabbed Darling’s wrists to examine the scars that Darling had made on his own body when he’d been unable to take his uncle’s bullshit anymore…

“They beat you?” Nyk had asked.

Darling had shoved him away and scooted out from under him. “Why do you think I run? Do you really think I enjoy eating garbage out of dumpsters in the middle of the night when I could be warm at home in a palace?”

Little had he known then that Nyk had endured a childhood that made his seem like paradise in comparison.

Instead of killing him, which would have been preferable all things considered, Nyk had shrugged his coat off and wrapped it around Darling’s shoulders. There was so much difference in their height and build back then that his coat had swallowed Darling whole.

“C’mon, kid, let’s get you fed and cleaned up.”

Darling had stood his ground. “I don’t want to go back.”

“I know… I do. But we both know that you have no choice. If I don’t take you back, someone else will, and they won’t feed you first.”

Disgusted by the fact that Nyk was right, he’d lowered his head and nodded glumly.

“Don’t worry, kid. Now that I know what you’re running from, I’ll give you as much protection as I can.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because no one deserves to be afraid to go home.”

From that night on, Nyk had done his damnedest to keep him safe. Sometimes it’d worked.

Others…

Darling sighed as he ran his fingers through Zarya’s hair. “After Nyk saw the condition I was in, he told me he would do his best to keep me out of the line of fire, and that he would teach me how to protect myself.”

“He trained you as an assassin?”

Darling nodded.

“Is that where your tattoo came from?”

“Yeah. After I’d completed my training, Hauk, who is an old childhood friend of Nyk’s, designed it for me and his brother Fain was the one who did it.” Darling wouldn’t have trusted anyone else to touch him that intimately. But the Hauks had always been good friends to him and he treasured them both.

“Has no one ever realized what it is, and the kind of training you’ve had?”

Bitterness choked him as he thought back to his stints in various asylums over the years. Like Pip, they’d assumed the tattoo was done as a joke or a way for Darling to attract men, and had mocked him for it.