[30 Kisses][Fire Emblem] Birthright
Feb. 1st, 2009 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreBirthright
Author: Amber Michelle
Pairing: Lehran/Sanaki
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9-10
Theme: 10 - #10
Words: 2446
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is copyrighted by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. I'm not getting any money out of this, just satisfaction~
Notes: set just after PoR. Pretty gen, considering.
......................................................
His empress was in the private garden behind the cathedral when Sephiran returned - alone, though he heard the tread of leather boots on gravel, on grass, and the brick walks around the perimeter. White appeared and disappeared behind the rose bushes, yellow in the light of the garden lanterns, belts clinked. The sky above the minarets was a dark orange, and between the eastward branches it was already blushing pink and darkening. She would have heard of his arrival, and in years past she met him in the corridors between her rooms and the wyvern stables when he came back after long trips, sandaled feet clapping on the tiles and indigo hair trailing in her wake. Today she was seated on a marble bench with one leg crossed over the other in a pool of golden light. The brass fixture swayed in a breeze, hanging over her head like a drooping flower, and the pages of her tome ruffled until she pressed them down with her hand.
"Your majesty," he said when he was close, a few yards away. She looked up, snapped the book closed, and almost stood before she caught herself, hands on the edge of the bench, and settled back again with her toes pointed to the ground. Sephiran watched her fidget and tried not to smile because she wouldn't appreciate it. "I apologize for making you wait," he said, coming even with her and kneeling on the brick walk.
Sanaki set her book on her velvet cloak, folded over the bench. Her shoulders were bare and brushed by the blunt ends of her hair. "They told me you arrived two hours ago. Whatever matter you had to take care of must have been pressing."
If he looked up, he knew her lips would be rounded in a pout. She still wasn't skilled enough to hide her emotions entirely. "There is an important matter we must discuss, as a matter of fact. I should be presentable, wouldn't you agree?" He watched the shadows sway on her folded hands with another breeze. Rose tickled his nose. "I flew all the way from Crimea without stopping."
"Hmm."
Sephiran took her small hands and brought them to his lips, turning his eyes up. Sanaki sighed, rolled hers, and her fingers curled around his hand, squeezed. "You know I hate to disappoint you," he said. He kissed her knuckles and rose. "We should talk inside."
He pulled her robe over his arm, tucked the book at his elbow, and she allowed him to lead her inside. On the way up to her rooms he told her about Queen Elincia's coronation and the days of celebration that followed it. She laughed at his description of Ike's painful awkwardness when he was approached by girls from the nobility, how he managed to say the wrong thing every time - you just don't tell a lady she looks sick when she's trying to laugh - and Sanaki rolled her eyes to the ceiling. Isn't he old enough to understand these things by now? But of course, he was a commoner through and through, she said. Perhaps he can't help it.
Greil's son was too honest; if he learned how to lie without giving himself away with awkward pauses and straying eyes, he would find a way to deflect the attention of Crimea's nobility, and perhaps even his queen. His innocence drew them like honey, like mosquitoes to blood, and rooted in their hearts a desire to corrupt him. Even Elincia would weigh Ike down if he allowed himself to be caught - with her secrets, her pleas, her pathetic and childish love. You can't leave the capitol yet, Sephiran heard her say to him the night he left, when he passed beneath the balcony she'd drawn him to. Just a few more weeks. They need to see you here. It will be reassuring.
In a month she would have another reason for him to stay. Sanaki did that when she was a child and he left for extended periods; but if you go, Lekain won't listen to me - and yet, the man did not listen to Sephiran either - or, I can't sleep when you're not here. What if somebody finds a way past your wards and tries to kill me? and she almost had him with that one, but on further testing his wards proved strong enough to even keep him out if he refrained from using his key. He knew of few assassins skilled enough to break through his spells, and they were all paid well to keep their distance from his empress.
When did she stop trying? When did she decide to let him leave without so much as a good-bye - when did she stop running to greet him when he left the stable yard, unable to wait five minutes for him to climb the stairs and present himself with more dignity?
Sanaki led him into her room by the hand, and he rested her book and the velvet on a chair. "What was it you couldn't tell me outside?" She chose another chair, one by the hearth, and leaned down to untie her sandals. "Something to do with Daein?"
"No." Sephiran sank to the rug at her side and pulled the leather straps around her other ankle. She tried to swat his hands away. "A song for Altina's daughter, though it has no words."
She rested her hands on her knees and sat back slightly, a line between her brows. The sandal dropped onto the floor. "Meaning--?"
"The galdr of release," he said, pulling her other sandal off and moving the pair under her chair. "I'm told it has the power to release the dark god from the medallion Prince Reyson carries, and only Altina's descendants have the ability to make it work."
Her toes curled, her foot tapped against his knee when she shifted on the cushion. Not long ago her feet wouldn't touch the floor when she sat in this chair. She'd grown during his absence. "Why haven't I heard of this?"
Sephiran looked up, watched Sanaki chew her lip. Why indeed. Her grandmother hadn't known the significance of her own Brand. "It must have been lost to your ancestors some time along the way. Now that you have the galdr, you can preserve it in your own memory, and teach your children when that time comes."
She muttered the word children with a twist to her mouth that made it look distasteful. "Well?" She reached for his hands and slid out of her chair to pull him up. "Sing."
The word chilled him, made his spine tingle, and Sephiran swallowed. He wanted to think his hands didn't tremble; she would feel it, and wonder. But he hadn't uttered a note since she was four or five, and maybe his hesitation would be assumed some kind of performance anxiety. She watched him avert his eyes, and he felt her fingers tighten just a little, pulling his hands.
He didn't have to sing. Not really. The words weren't passed down to Greil's children, and Sanaki had no need of them. Her voice would never release Yune. They might sing together for hours, the two of them, and never soothe the fire of his medallion.
Sephiran hummed the melody once at speed, then started again more slowly to allow his empress to follow the notes, join her voice with his. It's like a lullaby she said when they finished, staring at nothing. I'm sure I've heard it before. He tried to remember if he'd given it voice before, as he did so many other galdrar when she came to him screaming in the middle of the night, begging for him to wipe the images away. Which ones never mattered. Her nightmares were memories back then, recollection of things no child should ever see.
Maybe he did sing it to her. Maybe.
"Sephiran..."
He hadn't thought about the song in so long. It didn't belong to him anymore, and yet, he didn't know any others with which to soothe her. "Again?"
Sanaki shook her head. She let go of his hands and wove her fingers at her back, tilting her head, staring at that spot behind him on the wall. Maybe their reflection in the antique mirror. "It seems a normal song. Anyone can sing it."
He watched the top of her head, saw her arms flex and knew she was working her fingers where he couldn't see them, twisting or pulling apart. "No." Sephiran rested his hand against her head and bent his fingers into her hair. "The galdr is your birthright."
"Like the voice of the goddess?"
Sephiran stepped back, let his hand fall, and moved into her line of vision when she wouldn't look at him. Even then she would only look at his chin, or his collar, and refused to meet his gaze. "But you have the song now, and needn't wait for Ashera's convenience."
Her lips turned down. He wondered how long the senate would perpetuate that lie. As long as they needed to, perhaps, provided Sanaki didn't interfere with government. They didn't know the time he'd spent teaching her ethics and logic, law, things she would need to rule when she was ready to take control. He'd warned her against questioning the senators in public or acting on her own. Lekain and the others wanted a puppet and thought they had one; her trip to Serenes was concealed, Phoenicis promised never to contact her directly and reveal they'd met. Sephiran left her alone for months at a time to check on his plans, with Zelgius her only protection, and hoped the others assumed a certain distance between himself and his empress. It was true, after a fashion. She would no longer accept his assurances in this matter, for instance. She felt free to question him, and she was getting closer to asking the right ones, prodding the right matters, forcing him to tell her more lies.
He wasn't gone that long this year - perhaps five months, maybe six. Her hair was longer, her face seemed narrower. She changed so quickly. Before he flew to Crimea he spent hours going over accounts with the seamstress for a new series of dresses and formal costumes because Sanaki outgrew the others. Her sandals had to be remade. New jewelry had to be commissioned. Soon she would take control of these matters out of his hands and learn how to form her own networks of servants, spies and information.
How odd he should be pressed by the limit of beorc lifespans now, after living so many hundreds of years he couldn't count them anymore. Sanaki seemed a little different every day. What if this war stretched long enough he had to let her get married?
No. That wouldn't happen. There was no need to whisper criticisms into her ear; she already turned her nose up at the very idea. He would talk her out of it if she ever thought of changing her mind. He'd be the first to know.
"You'll come of age in a few years," Sephiran said. "You shouldn't worry about a matter out of your control. Let the goddess mind her own time, and spend your energy on something you can take care of - like that bit of legislation Valtome proposed before I left."
Sanaki blinked and looked him in the eye finally. "But you said to leave it alone."
"Daein is ours." The commoners would starve through the winter. The senate would take advantage of them somehow - it didn't matter how. "Let them occupy themselves with our new conquest. This will seem a small matter in comparison."
"I see." She drew her hand out and bit her knuckle. "It's so hard to interrupt them, though. If I draw too much attention to what I want, they might realize why."
Sephiran pulled her hand away from her mouth. "I'll bring it up. They'll turn their irritation on me, and you can work a concession out of them."
"Don't be silly. I'm not afraid of them." Sanaki tossed her hair back and blew her bangs from her eyes. "Unless you can do this without inciting their ire at all--"
"I know just the right senator to approach," he said, rolling his lips together to repress a smile. Her eyes narrowed, but no, he didn't mean Oliver, and she couldn't imagine anyone else falling over himself to get his attention, could she? Sephiran laughed when she pulled her hand away and her nose scrunched up. "Not that way, my little empress." He hugged her around the shoulders and looked down at the crown of her head, an even height with his shoulder. "Hetzel will support us on small issues. We'll start with him."
"I'm not little," Sanaki muttered into his coat. Her thin arms wrapped around his waist. She smelled like honey soap and the lavender sachets packed into her clothing chests and armoire.
"You need to stop entertaining such crass notions." Sephiran combed her hair, pulled it to the back of her neck and let it fan back to her shoulders, and she allowed her irritation to be stroked away, like a cat. "Where do you get these ideas?"
She shrugged, pressing her face into his shoulder. "I missed you." Her hands locked at his back. His shoulder muffled her voice, the fabric sticking to her cheek and heating under her breath. "Don't go anywhere. Not for a while. Please?"
"I think I can keep that promise," he said. "For now, at least."
Sanaki hmphed into his shirt. She was like a fire, like the sun, warming the cold packed into his bones during the long flight home. "Will you sing the galdr for me again? Just one more time."
Sephiran let his hand rest at her neck, where the nobs of her spine gave his fingers somewhere to rest. "Of course. I'll sing as many times as you want."
............................................................................
Redemption in the form of s-sleeping with not!heron Sephiran is clearly the premise I've been looking for in regards to Oliver/Sephiran. Why. Why why why.
I feel like, if I ever wrote Oliver getting some, it'd be a lot like the legendary "Palmer Gets Laid" FF7 fic that was so horrible, and yet so funny and over the top. That's the way I remember it anyway.
I suppose this speculation is a little out of place at the end of a Lehran/Sanaki post, but.
Author: Amber Michelle
Pairing: Lehran/Sanaki
Fandom: Fire Emblem 9-10
Theme: 10 - #10
Words: 2446
Rating: K
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem is copyrighted by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo. I'm not getting any money out of this, just satisfaction~
Notes: set just after PoR. Pretty gen, considering.
......................................................
His empress was in the private garden behind the cathedral when Sephiran returned - alone, though he heard the tread of leather boots on gravel, on grass, and the brick walks around the perimeter. White appeared and disappeared behind the rose bushes, yellow in the light of the garden lanterns, belts clinked. The sky above the minarets was a dark orange, and between the eastward branches it was already blushing pink and darkening. She would have heard of his arrival, and in years past she met him in the corridors between her rooms and the wyvern stables when he came back after long trips, sandaled feet clapping on the tiles and indigo hair trailing in her wake. Today she was seated on a marble bench with one leg crossed over the other in a pool of golden light. The brass fixture swayed in a breeze, hanging over her head like a drooping flower, and the pages of her tome ruffled until she pressed them down with her hand.
"Your majesty," he said when he was close, a few yards away. She looked up, snapped the book closed, and almost stood before she caught herself, hands on the edge of the bench, and settled back again with her toes pointed to the ground. Sephiran watched her fidget and tried not to smile because she wouldn't appreciate it. "I apologize for making you wait," he said, coming even with her and kneeling on the brick walk.
Sanaki set her book on her velvet cloak, folded over the bench. Her shoulders were bare and brushed by the blunt ends of her hair. "They told me you arrived two hours ago. Whatever matter you had to take care of must have been pressing."
If he looked up, he knew her lips would be rounded in a pout. She still wasn't skilled enough to hide her emotions entirely. "There is an important matter we must discuss, as a matter of fact. I should be presentable, wouldn't you agree?" He watched the shadows sway on her folded hands with another breeze. Rose tickled his nose. "I flew all the way from Crimea without stopping."
"Hmm."
Sephiran took her small hands and brought them to his lips, turning his eyes up. Sanaki sighed, rolled hers, and her fingers curled around his hand, squeezed. "You know I hate to disappoint you," he said. He kissed her knuckles and rose. "We should talk inside."
He pulled her robe over his arm, tucked the book at his elbow, and she allowed him to lead her inside. On the way up to her rooms he told her about Queen Elincia's coronation and the days of celebration that followed it. She laughed at his description of Ike's painful awkwardness when he was approached by girls from the nobility, how he managed to say the wrong thing every time - you just don't tell a lady she looks sick when she's trying to laugh - and Sanaki rolled her eyes to the ceiling. Isn't he old enough to understand these things by now? But of course, he was a commoner through and through, she said. Perhaps he can't help it.
Greil's son was too honest; if he learned how to lie without giving himself away with awkward pauses and straying eyes, he would find a way to deflect the attention of Crimea's nobility, and perhaps even his queen. His innocence drew them like honey, like mosquitoes to blood, and rooted in their hearts a desire to corrupt him. Even Elincia would weigh Ike down if he allowed himself to be caught - with her secrets, her pleas, her pathetic and childish love. You can't leave the capitol yet, Sephiran heard her say to him the night he left, when he passed beneath the balcony she'd drawn him to. Just a few more weeks. They need to see you here. It will be reassuring.
In a month she would have another reason for him to stay. Sanaki did that when she was a child and he left for extended periods; but if you go, Lekain won't listen to me - and yet, the man did not listen to Sephiran either - or, I can't sleep when you're not here. What if somebody finds a way past your wards and tries to kill me? and she almost had him with that one, but on further testing his wards proved strong enough to even keep him out if he refrained from using his key. He knew of few assassins skilled enough to break through his spells, and they were all paid well to keep their distance from his empress.
When did she stop trying? When did she decide to let him leave without so much as a good-bye - when did she stop running to greet him when he left the stable yard, unable to wait five minutes for him to climb the stairs and present himself with more dignity?
Sanaki led him into her room by the hand, and he rested her book and the velvet on a chair. "What was it you couldn't tell me outside?" She chose another chair, one by the hearth, and leaned down to untie her sandals. "Something to do with Daein?"
"No." Sephiran sank to the rug at her side and pulled the leather straps around her other ankle. She tried to swat his hands away. "A song for Altina's daughter, though it has no words."
She rested her hands on her knees and sat back slightly, a line between her brows. The sandal dropped onto the floor. "Meaning--?"
"The galdr of release," he said, pulling her other sandal off and moving the pair under her chair. "I'm told it has the power to release the dark god from the medallion Prince Reyson carries, and only Altina's descendants have the ability to make it work."
Her toes curled, her foot tapped against his knee when she shifted on the cushion. Not long ago her feet wouldn't touch the floor when she sat in this chair. She'd grown during his absence. "Why haven't I heard of this?"
Sephiran looked up, watched Sanaki chew her lip. Why indeed. Her grandmother hadn't known the significance of her own Brand. "It must have been lost to your ancestors some time along the way. Now that you have the galdr, you can preserve it in your own memory, and teach your children when that time comes."
She muttered the word children with a twist to her mouth that made it look distasteful. "Well?" She reached for his hands and slid out of her chair to pull him up. "Sing."
The word chilled him, made his spine tingle, and Sephiran swallowed. He wanted to think his hands didn't tremble; she would feel it, and wonder. But he hadn't uttered a note since she was four or five, and maybe his hesitation would be assumed some kind of performance anxiety. She watched him avert his eyes, and he felt her fingers tighten just a little, pulling his hands.
He didn't have to sing. Not really. The words weren't passed down to Greil's children, and Sanaki had no need of them. Her voice would never release Yune. They might sing together for hours, the two of them, and never soothe the fire of his medallion.
Sephiran hummed the melody once at speed, then started again more slowly to allow his empress to follow the notes, join her voice with his. It's like a lullaby she said when they finished, staring at nothing. I'm sure I've heard it before. He tried to remember if he'd given it voice before, as he did so many other galdrar when she came to him screaming in the middle of the night, begging for him to wipe the images away. Which ones never mattered. Her nightmares were memories back then, recollection of things no child should ever see.
Maybe he did sing it to her. Maybe.
"Sephiran..."
He hadn't thought about the song in so long. It didn't belong to him anymore, and yet, he didn't know any others with which to soothe her. "Again?"
Sanaki shook her head. She let go of his hands and wove her fingers at her back, tilting her head, staring at that spot behind him on the wall. Maybe their reflection in the antique mirror. "It seems a normal song. Anyone can sing it."
He watched the top of her head, saw her arms flex and knew she was working her fingers where he couldn't see them, twisting or pulling apart. "No." Sephiran rested his hand against her head and bent his fingers into her hair. "The galdr is your birthright."
"Like the voice of the goddess?"
Sephiran stepped back, let his hand fall, and moved into her line of vision when she wouldn't look at him. Even then she would only look at his chin, or his collar, and refused to meet his gaze. "But you have the song now, and needn't wait for Ashera's convenience."
Her lips turned down. He wondered how long the senate would perpetuate that lie. As long as they needed to, perhaps, provided Sanaki didn't interfere with government. They didn't know the time he'd spent teaching her ethics and logic, law, things she would need to rule when she was ready to take control. He'd warned her against questioning the senators in public or acting on her own. Lekain and the others wanted a puppet and thought they had one; her trip to Serenes was concealed, Phoenicis promised never to contact her directly and reveal they'd met. Sephiran left her alone for months at a time to check on his plans, with Zelgius her only protection, and hoped the others assumed a certain distance between himself and his empress. It was true, after a fashion. She would no longer accept his assurances in this matter, for instance. She felt free to question him, and she was getting closer to asking the right ones, prodding the right matters, forcing him to tell her more lies.
He wasn't gone that long this year - perhaps five months, maybe six. Her hair was longer, her face seemed narrower. She changed so quickly. Before he flew to Crimea he spent hours going over accounts with the seamstress for a new series of dresses and formal costumes because Sanaki outgrew the others. Her sandals had to be remade. New jewelry had to be commissioned. Soon she would take control of these matters out of his hands and learn how to form her own networks of servants, spies and information.
How odd he should be pressed by the limit of beorc lifespans now, after living so many hundreds of years he couldn't count them anymore. Sanaki seemed a little different every day. What if this war stretched long enough he had to let her get married?
No. That wouldn't happen. There was no need to whisper criticisms into her ear; she already turned her nose up at the very idea. He would talk her out of it if she ever thought of changing her mind. He'd be the first to know.
"You'll come of age in a few years," Sephiran said. "You shouldn't worry about a matter out of your control. Let the goddess mind her own time, and spend your energy on something you can take care of - like that bit of legislation Valtome proposed before I left."
Sanaki blinked and looked him in the eye finally. "But you said to leave it alone."
"Daein is ours." The commoners would starve through the winter. The senate would take advantage of them somehow - it didn't matter how. "Let them occupy themselves with our new conquest. This will seem a small matter in comparison."
"I see." She drew her hand out and bit her knuckle. "It's so hard to interrupt them, though. If I draw too much attention to what I want, they might realize why."
Sephiran pulled her hand away from her mouth. "I'll bring it up. They'll turn their irritation on me, and you can work a concession out of them."
"Don't be silly. I'm not afraid of them." Sanaki tossed her hair back and blew her bangs from her eyes. "Unless you can do this without inciting their ire at all--"
"I know just the right senator to approach," he said, rolling his lips together to repress a smile. Her eyes narrowed, but no, he didn't mean Oliver, and she couldn't imagine anyone else falling over himself to get his attention, could she? Sephiran laughed when she pulled her hand away and her nose scrunched up. "Not that way, my little empress." He hugged her around the shoulders and looked down at the crown of her head, an even height with his shoulder. "Hetzel will support us on small issues. We'll start with him."
"I'm not little," Sanaki muttered into his coat. Her thin arms wrapped around his waist. She smelled like honey soap and the lavender sachets packed into her clothing chests and armoire.
"You need to stop entertaining such crass notions." Sephiran combed her hair, pulled it to the back of her neck and let it fan back to her shoulders, and she allowed her irritation to be stroked away, like a cat. "Where do you get these ideas?"
She shrugged, pressing her face into his shoulder. "I missed you." Her hands locked at his back. His shoulder muffled her voice, the fabric sticking to her cheek and heating under her breath. "Don't go anywhere. Not for a while. Please?"
"I think I can keep that promise," he said. "For now, at least."
Sanaki hmphed into his shirt. She was like a fire, like the sun, warming the cold packed into his bones during the long flight home. "Will you sing the galdr for me again? Just one more time."
Sephiran let his hand rest at her neck, where the nobs of her spine gave his fingers somewhere to rest. "Of course. I'll sing as many times as you want."
............................................................................
Redemption in the form of s-sleeping with not!heron Sephiran is clearly the premise I've been looking for in regards to Oliver/Sephiran. Why. Why why why.
I feel like, if I ever wrote Oliver getting some, it'd be a lot like the legendary "Palmer Gets Laid" FF7 fic that was so horrible, and yet so funny and over the top. That's the way I remember it anyway.
I suppose this speculation is a little out of place at the end of a Lehran/Sanaki post, but.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-01 05:59 pm (UTC)Kind of hard to type, so I'll be brief: Sephiran reflecting on Sanaki's growth was cute, Sephiran's anxiety over singing was aww, and "no, not Oliver" made me smile.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 02:04 am (UTC)Hahahaha, I've decided Sanaki should know exactly what Oliver's interest in him is. More fun for later. I'm glad you liked it~
God I love this icon of yours. /fangirl
no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 02:05 am (UTC)Sanaki would totally pick up on that, and I approve~
no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-02 02:05 am (UTC)Thank you, I'm glad you liked. XD
no subject
Date: 2009-02-08 03:37 pm (UTC)His empress Haha, possession! THE AUTHOR SHOWS HER BIAS~
I really like the opening paragraph too. It's really lovely~!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-09 01:34 am (UTC)Innocent in the ways of *cough* love, why don't we say that. XD
WHAT BIAS it's totally in the script~! HA! "Yes, my empress," "I hear and obey, my empress," "you'll always be my little Lady Sanaki," (emphasis mine, but seriously) - IT'S ALL OVER THE PLACE.
Thank you~ XD