A/N - 46Kibahime has started streaming her art, and recently, she drew an AU 'Paladin Cryo', which honestly, is just SO FLIPPIN COOL FAM WHAT LOOK AT THAT ARMOUR
Link to Kiba's twitch channel ~ twitch.tv/46kibahime
Then she hit me with a line about how Cryo has 'emotional armour', and welp, that line had me writing this short not-legit in a frenzy because we all know the one person who's proven capable of getting beneath that armour.
(wattpad kills the quality, for the Paladin Cryo art in its full glory, check my Discord server <3) She also made a REALLY cool piece of Banshee art, 10/10 would recommend
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ShadowSong AU, where Jason is a knight, known as the 'Frost Paladin, Cryophoenix', who has been leading the charge against the threat to his kingdom for the last several months--but unknown to the majority of the kingdom, he hasn't been doing it alone.
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Cryo slowly trod his way up the wide stairs of the house, acutely aware of each, loud scrape of his armour against the walls.
The battle had taken its toll on him. His movements were stiff, his eyes heavy from the lack of sleep in the past months. The wariness, the constant edge of danger to every decision, every detail--it all added up, but it'd been worth it.
The war was won. After several, long months--he could return to the home he'd defended.
He made it up the stairs and headed to his room. The door swung open, and he ducked inside. His greaves made a muted thud on the wooden floor that creaked beneath his weight. The room was spacious enough--he'd been redirected twice before the town had found him a room 'suitable' enough in some noble's home, despite his protests. A bed, a small sitting lounge, a table, and at the far end, a mirror.
Cryo strode up to the mirror, looking at the warrior who stared back at him, sword in hand.
His armour was damaged. It was stained with the blood of the lives he'd taken to defend his kingdom. It was battered and bent from the hundreds, if not thousands of hits it'd protected him from. There was little shine to it now, buried beneath the dirt and grime of weeks in the field.
The Frost Paladin, Cryophoenix.
Saviour--that's what they'd called him when the King had knighted him on the snowy battlefield, amongst the corpses of nightmares made flesh.
Cryo tossed the sword on the floor, letting it clatter to stillness.
He'd never felt like it. He'd simply answered the call and fought. Every life was a trade, every swing of his weapon calculated. The ambushes, the desperate battles as he and so many others had held the pass to give the others time to escape, to summon reinforcements.
Yet he'd held his head high. He had risen with his new title heavy on his shoulders, and he had accepted his duty, had played the role as required, no matter how hollow it had left him.
Behind him, he heard the sound of the window latch catching.
Slowly, Cryo turned, finding the window swinging open, the first hint of a blizzard drifting inside. He glanced at the sword, mentally cursing his lapse in guard. They'd known there were small pockets of resistance left. He'd chased out several himself. Had thought this area clear.
"Still a little one edge, eh, Cryo?" said a familiar voice.
Cryo glanced back over his shoulder, finding a woman in dark, tight-fitting leathers leaning against the wall, flipping her dagger in her hand with a well-worn smile.
The thief, Banshee.
"I hadn't expected to see you again so soon," said Cryo.
Banshee pushed herself off the wall, sheathing her daggers. "I saw you being paraded up the stairs and thought you might need a little help getting all... this off," she said, waving a hand over his armour. "You've never been great at accepting help."
"I am capable of--"
"Saving an entire kingdom and its people from the Great Darkness?" said Banshee, flashing him a quick smile as she stepped closer and began loosening the straps of his spaulders. "Mmhmm. I know better than most exactly how capable you are, and that even the most prestigious knights sometimes need a little help."
Cryo stilled, allowing her to release the straps. She placed one spaulder on the nearby table and set to work on the next.
He still wasn't quite sure how they'd ended up like this. She'd found him during the war effort, had offered her talents to him, free of charge. After stealing his sword and two maps containing mission-sensitive orders from his heavily guarded command tent to prove her point, he'd finally decided to tentatively trust her.
Banshee moved like a shadow. She was able to slip into strongholds that the largest armies hadn't been able to breach in centuries. Had slipped into one and opened the gates in the dead of night, allowing one of Cryo's greatest victories that'd saved a siege and countless lives. He'd lost count of the times that her skills had saved not only him, but thousands more.
And somewhere along the way, they'd become... this. Long nights spent in his tent in secret, discussing the Kingdom's movements had turned into something more. Something that filled the growing hollow within his chest--something that had kept him going, even when it'd all been too much.
Her smile, her quick words of encouragement, that selfless attitude that would see her throw herself in front of a sword before she allowed anyone else to come to harm.
Banshee sat him down on the small sitting sofa to take off his greaves. "Long day, hey?"
Cryo rolled his shoulder, glad to be free of the weight. "You could say that."
Another smile. "I did see them parading you around for a few hours. I think that whole 'finding a suitable room for the Frost Paladin' was just an excuse to show you off to the town a little longer."
"I did come to the same conclusion, but I thought it better to simply endure."
Banshee yanked his gauntlets off. When she pulled off his gloves, her fingers lingered against his skin a few seconds longer than they both knew was proper. Her touch was light, trailing against his wrist, barely a few inches from his hands before she finally pulled away.
"Simply endure, hey?" The other gauntlet, the other glove. "I seem to remember you telling me you hated all that nonsense." She tapped his chestplate. "Don't tell me you've frozen under all this."
The smallest hint of a smile curved the edge of his mouth. "How could it, with you around?"
Banshee pulled him to his feet and motioned for him to turn. She began working on the straps of his chest plate. "So, how are you feeling with all this war stuff being over at last?"
"I doubt it'll be over for me for a long time," murmured Cryo. "The King has requested a number of things from me, though he has granted me a brief reprieve to visit home."
"And where is home for you?" asked Banshee.
Cryo paused. He'd been asked that question so many times the nights before the battles as the others looked to him for inspiration, for strength, that the answer had almost become routine. Home is at my family's estate.
But it never had been. That manor had been cold, stone walls that no amount of fire at the hearth could banish. It had been sharp words with heavy expectations. An impossible standard that not even the Frost Paladin could ever hope to conquer. Home for him was lies. It was anger and guilt and an endless strive for perfection, and it echoed like the hollow the war had brought him.
"I don't know," said Cryo, allowing himself to speak the truth for the first time.
Banshee removed the last of his armour, leaving Cryo in his underclothes and the stylised helm with its delicately crafted ice-feathers adorning his head.
"Well," she said. "After this, I doubt anyone is gonna tell the great Frost Paladin what he's gotta do." She sat down on the sofa and leaned back, her amber-white hair draping across it haphazardly as she looked up at him with a conspiratorial smile. "Home has never exactly been one place for me, either. If you want, you could hang around with me for a while. You'd have to ditch the armour though, at least for a while."
Cryo glanced at the pile of armour on the table. It'd protected him for a long time, but the idea of being without its weight, at least for a time... it was tempting.
"I suppose I could," said Cryo, sitting on the sofa beside her. "But first, I have a question for you."
She pursed her lips. "Is it about where I got that coin purse from that one time? Because I swear, the noble really didn't need it, he had like, fifty of them just lying around in his carriage."
"I--no, but that's concerning," said Cryo with a frown. "I was going to ask for your name."
Banshee blinked at him. "My name?"
"Is that strange?" asked Cryo. He'd become closer to her than any of his commanders, yet he barely knew the first thing about her life. He knew that she was brave, that she was selfless and kind and had a strange affinity for nicknames. They'd fought side by side endless times, yet he'd never learned her name.
She hummed to herself. "For other people? Yes. For us? No."
Banshee sat up, extending a hand towards him.
"Nice to meet you, Frost Paladin Cryophoenix," she said with a grin. "My name is Olivia."
Cryo took her hand. "It's my honour, Olivia. You may call me Jason."
Olivia tilted her head. "So it's Jason beneath all that armour, eh?" Her grip changed from a simple handshake as her fingers slid between his. "I like it."
Jason gave her hand a gentle squeeze and brought it to his lips, placing a gentle kiss on the back of her hand. And Banshee--Olivia--for all her bravado, turned bright red.
Maybe home wasn't a singular place, as he'd so often been taught.
Maybe for him, home could be at her side--wherever in the world it was that they happened to find themselves.
There was only one way to find out.
Jason smiled. "I think I do, too."
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