[Fire Emblem] The Greatest Truth
Oct. 31st, 2009 05:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreThe Greatest Truth
Author: Amber Michelle
Series: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Characters: Lehran (Altina, Zelgius, Sanaki)
Rating: K
Words: 828
Prompt:
Fire Emblem 10, Lehran, remembering those he has loved
................................................................
Memory had never served Lehran well. Voices, faces, the texture of hair or wing, the scent lingering in his wife's hair or at the throat of a favorite servant, they all bled together a little more each year, softening, fading, like a rock on a beach washed over and over again with sand until its surface was smooth, gray, and uniform - until it shrank and broke apart into more sand, and buried other memories. He sat on a flat rock reaching over the aqua surface of his lake, at the center of his forest, under a sky dusky, purple, orange and blue, glittering with stars far to the east. He saw the arch of his wings in the reflection but not his face. If he leaned over the edge he'd only finish the job, sink to the bottom, and forget everything.
On nights like this he recalled kissing Altina - her lips, her cheeks, her chin. The tip of her nose was a favorite spot, one she always swatted him away from. It's ugly, she said. Slightly crooked. Broken during a sparring match in her youth. Her voice always clipped the explanation, her hand always waved his attention elsewhere, and Lehran felt it his duty to protest. It wasn't ugly - nothing about her was ugly, only strong, and smooth, and warm. He remembered telling her there was no shame in a majestic beak, and laughing until he cried while she attacked him with a pillow, scattering goose-down across the bed-- threatening to use his own feathers to re-stuff the thing if he didn't keep his mouth shut.
Sanaki often echoed Altina when he tried to remember loving her: her voice, her hair, her shape. He summoned her silvery scent to mind, the mix of metal and leather and lily perfume, and remembered--
Too much. Metal, salt. Hair prickled on his fingers, sharper than the sensation of the rock beneath his hands, dark blue and cropped close, and a hawk spreading its wings in brushstrokes on skin that should have been bronzed by the sun: majesty, strength coiled beneath his fingertips. If he closed his eyes he could still feel it, and that-- that was too much, and a memory too little.
Tell me the truth, Sanaki had demanded, years ago. Tell me why.
Truth. One's experiences were the greatest truth - yet his own were degraded, blank, the farther back he reached.
Why did you save me? Wouldn't civil war in Begnion hurry Tellius to the fate you wanted?
That, Lehran remembered. He didn't recall what he told the empress, because something in his chest had flinched at the thought of speaking the truth, and evasion was a matter of course with Sanaki. A clean break between them was better. Exile was better. Contempt was bearable. He didn't tell her she survived to sit on the throne because he couldn't stand back and let Begnion implode, couldn't let the war take the last of his children. She looked nothing like him or his wife; there was no trace of his scent on her, no thrill of blood. Only the violet hair brought to mind her ancestor, and her eyes-- and the way she squared her shoulders to snap orders, flung her arm out to punctuate an accusation, the way she leapt up and made it seem she flew into the saddle when she was in a hurry, and the tiny frown she wore while contemplating an error, a puzzle, a slippery bit of evasion he might feed her to hide his intentions.
Some day you'll have to tell her what we're doing, Zelgius had said once. Or kill her.
He didn't even look at his weapon, but Lehran recognized the offer and felt it dig cold fingers between his ribs. Zelgius said things like that sometimes, warned him - you've grown too attached, you're too distracted, that opening nearly slipped past us. His arm supported Lehran when he stumbled, strong and unmovable as rock, and pulled him back to the correct path when he wandered off, wondering if there was another way, if they'd been found out-- but they were never caught, because Zelgius was a perfect knight, a perfect agent. His only mistakes were wounds, and dying.
His flesh was already gray and cold when Lehran was able to descend and say good-bye to him, with the empress, Ike, everyone crowding at his back, watching. Zelgius's eyes didn't flutter open as they often did when Lehran came in late, his fingers didn't twitch or reach. His eyes, once, were the same green as the depth of the Serenes lake. Every time he saw the emerald mirror of the water he remembered that he didn't reach to touch that hand. He would always know that, even if he forgot everything else.
.
Author: Amber Michelle
Series: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn
Characters: Lehran (Altina, Zelgius, Sanaki)
Rating: K
Words: 828
Prompt:
Fire Emblem 10, Lehran, remembering those he has loved
................................................................
Memory had never served Lehran well. Voices, faces, the texture of hair or wing, the scent lingering in his wife's hair or at the throat of a favorite servant, they all bled together a little more each year, softening, fading, like a rock on a beach washed over and over again with sand until its surface was smooth, gray, and uniform - until it shrank and broke apart into more sand, and buried other memories. He sat on a flat rock reaching over the aqua surface of his lake, at the center of his forest, under a sky dusky, purple, orange and blue, glittering with stars far to the east. He saw the arch of his wings in the reflection but not his face. If he leaned over the edge he'd only finish the job, sink to the bottom, and forget everything.
On nights like this he recalled kissing Altina - her lips, her cheeks, her chin. The tip of her nose was a favorite spot, one she always swatted him away from. It's ugly, she said. Slightly crooked. Broken during a sparring match in her youth. Her voice always clipped the explanation, her hand always waved his attention elsewhere, and Lehran felt it his duty to protest. It wasn't ugly - nothing about her was ugly, only strong, and smooth, and warm. He remembered telling her there was no shame in a majestic beak, and laughing until he cried while she attacked him with a pillow, scattering goose-down across the bed-- threatening to use his own feathers to re-stuff the thing if he didn't keep his mouth shut.
Sanaki often echoed Altina when he tried to remember loving her: her voice, her hair, her shape. He summoned her silvery scent to mind, the mix of metal and leather and lily perfume, and remembered--
Too much. Metal, salt. Hair prickled on his fingers, sharper than the sensation of the rock beneath his hands, dark blue and cropped close, and a hawk spreading its wings in brushstrokes on skin that should have been bronzed by the sun: majesty, strength coiled beneath his fingertips. If he closed his eyes he could still feel it, and that-- that was too much, and a memory too little.
Tell me the truth, Sanaki had demanded, years ago. Tell me why.
Truth. One's experiences were the greatest truth - yet his own were degraded, blank, the farther back he reached.
Why did you save me? Wouldn't civil war in Begnion hurry Tellius to the fate you wanted?
That, Lehran remembered. He didn't recall what he told the empress, because something in his chest had flinched at the thought of speaking the truth, and evasion was a matter of course with Sanaki. A clean break between them was better. Exile was better. Contempt was bearable. He didn't tell her she survived to sit on the throne because he couldn't stand back and let Begnion implode, couldn't let the war take the last of his children. She looked nothing like him or his wife; there was no trace of his scent on her, no thrill of blood. Only the violet hair brought to mind her ancestor, and her eyes-- and the way she squared her shoulders to snap orders, flung her arm out to punctuate an accusation, the way she leapt up and made it seem she flew into the saddle when she was in a hurry, and the tiny frown she wore while contemplating an error, a puzzle, a slippery bit of evasion he might feed her to hide his intentions.
Some day you'll have to tell her what we're doing, Zelgius had said once. Or kill her.
He didn't even look at his weapon, but Lehran recognized the offer and felt it dig cold fingers between his ribs. Zelgius said things like that sometimes, warned him - you've grown too attached, you're too distracted, that opening nearly slipped past us. His arm supported Lehran when he stumbled, strong and unmovable as rock, and pulled him back to the correct path when he wandered off, wondering if there was another way, if they'd been found out-- but they were never caught, because Zelgius was a perfect knight, a perfect agent. His only mistakes were wounds, and dying.
His flesh was already gray and cold when Lehran was able to descend and say good-bye to him, with the empress, Ike, everyone crowding at his back, watching. Zelgius's eyes didn't flutter open as they often did when Lehran came in late, his fingers didn't twitch or reach. His eyes, once, were the same green as the depth of the Serenes lake. Every time he saw the emerald mirror of the water he remembered that he didn't reach to touch that hand. He would always know that, even if he forgot everything else.
.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-01 07:46 pm (UTC)very good!
chelle
no subject
Date: 2009-11-02 06:08 am (UTC)It's supposed to be comment fic, so making them long is actually a bad idea. :D;