Expiation
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
Contains: Massive spoilers for FE12. Angst and feelings of worthlessness. Implied female!MyUnit/Katarina. And crack. Enjoy.
The mercy of man was not the mercy of the gods.
Katarina knew this now; part of her soul always had known it. Lord Marth hadn't granted her forgiveness by refusing to accept her life when she offered it up to him as the only suitable payment for her crimes. He had not given her instruction on how she might redeem herself, to him and to all she had betrayed. He had merely allowed her to live.
It was a mercy she had not wanted. To be left to her own devices, to search within herself and discover the means of her atonement... it did not lift the shadow of fear from her life. At times it seemed Katarina had nothing but her fears- first the simple fear of punishment, then the fear of exposure before those she'd called her friends, followed by the crushing fear that one day she must again look into the faces of those she'd wronged. She'd looked forward to her overdue appointment with Lord Marth's justice, if his blade took away the fear when it took her life.
And since he refused to take either, fear was ever at her back when Katarina followed Lord Marth back to Altea. A shiver down her spine, a chill touch between her shoulders, a constant reminder that true justice awaited her. The duties she was given as a sign of trust did not lessen her fear, not did the smiles her old friends showed her. The gratitude of the Altean people for her small acts of service- a thief apprehended, a ring of slavers uncovered, a child returned to her parents- did not dull the jagged edge of her fear. Trust, friendship, gratitude... these, in the end, were not the answers Katarina sought.
For a time, Katarina thought Chris would be her answer. Chris, who charged headlong into life with her sword flashing and long hair streaming behind her... Chris, who offered her constant encouragement, support, and everything else Katarina had long desired without hope of ever attaining it. But Chris thought loyalty uncomplicated and atonement effortless, as though the basic desire to make reparation equated to reparation itself. Chris did not know what it was to have fear as a daily companion, one that sank deep claws into the soul. She did not know what it was to move through each day without will, pushed and pulled as though strings bound every limb. She basked in Lord Marth's favor- valued, cherished, possibly even loved. Chris was worth something. Katarina was not, no matter how many times Chris assured her otherwise.
In the end, Katarina was a broken tool, mended by and held in careful hands, but a tool all the same.
As the months, the years, passed beneath the Altean sun, the means of atonement did not reveal itself to Katarina. But the means of heavenly justice, a justice at odds with Lord Marth's mercy, seemed plain enough to her. She remembered Prince Michalis, dead of his wounds in the wastelands of Macedon despite his final conversion to the cause of light- dead in a state of grace, perhaps, but dead all the same, his collected crimes too great to permit him another chance in this world.
She watched the fall of Sir Abel and Dame Est, unable to repair the bonds of marriage warped by her capture and his service to the Dark Emperor. That Abel hadn't been a willing servant of Emperor Hardin, that Lord Marth had known this and forgiven him the trepass, seemed to make no difference- it seemed neither Abel nor his wife could live with themselves, and now they were both vanished, she in flight and he in pursuit. Flight... not redemption. If there was no hope in Altea for one such as Sir Abel, who had been at Lord Marth's side for so long, and served with such valor, what redemption might one as Katarina truly expect?
And now came news from the frontier, that Captain Wolf- the man who exemplified loyalty, the man who had served Emperor Hardin almost to the end, out of allegiance to the just man Hardin once had been- had thrown away his life in a battle with the Fire Tribe. His men had found him after the battle, lying on the bloodied earth with a smile on his face. Katarina heard the tale, and knew exactly what had driven the man to seek out death in the midst of the enemy.
Wolf had not meant to serve evil, had not meant to commit acts of evil, any more than Sir Abel had desired to betray his country. Any more than Emperor Hardin had wished to be a monstrous ruler when he ascended to the throne. Any more than...
Any more that Katarina had looked upon Lord Marth for the first time, one sunlit day not so many years in the past, and felt any desire to fulfill her orders by killing him. And while Lord Marth, while Chris, might make the distinction between intent and action... the heavens, quite clearly, did not. And so the guilty fell, or disappeared, despite the mercy of men.
Words of comfort, of encouragement, a gentle hand wiping her tears and a warm embrace in the dark- these did not make Katarina innocent. It only meant that the justice of man, Lord Marth's justice, deigned to let her alone until the moment when the justice of the gods caught up with her. The mechanism of that justice was as unyielding, as unfeeling, as the progress of the stars across the sky.
When Katarina reached out for Chris in the night, and instead saw a red-haired maiden where Chris had been but a moment before, she knew her hour had come.
"Well, what sort of bad apple do we have here?"
It was almost a relief to hear herself described as rotten fruit. It felt... normal, somehow.
"Are you the angel of death?"
And the red-haired maiden laughed at her.
"Not quite, sugar. They call me Anna."
"Anna," Katarina mouthed silently, then forced herself to speak. "What do you want with me?"
"Well, you've stuck it out so far without throwing yourself off the castle walls, so I figured it was time to really give you a second chance. A fresh start in a new world- how's that sound?"
It sounded like the sort of promise that would never be realized, the sparkling sort of promise that would be jerked away from her at the last second. But Katarina played along.
"Can you give that to me?"
"Yep!" Anna said with a knowing smile. "Now, what would you like to do with yourself from here on out?"
Katarina was silent for a moment, recalling fragments of hopes and dreams she'd carried around through years of deceit and years of penance.
"I... I had wanted to be a tactician."
And she had wanted it, truly, in spite of the webbing of lies that enveloped her during her time in the Seventh Platoon. Katarina had desired, then, to become exactly what she pretended to be, the guiding hand that orchestrated a victory on the field. She had wanted to be the hand, not the tool within the hand, used only to kill.
"A tactician, huh?" Anna raised one finger to her lips and seemed to consider Katarina for a moment that, to Katarina, seemed interminable. "I'll tell you what. There's a little group of people out there on the other side of existence that could use a tactician to see them through a fight that they don't know is coming. How'd you like to help them out?"
"Yes!"
"All right done. Here's the catch- not a one of your new friends can be lost this time. If you make it through without letting one of them fall, you're in the clear. How 'bout it?"
It sounded impossible, but Katarina didn't care. This was her moment, and fleeing Anna's offer would mean no redemption, not ever.
"Yes. Please." As the reality of the offer sank in- the other side of existence-she glanced from side to side, looking for Chris, for her tomes, for anything familiar in the darkness. "Just give me a moment to pack... and to make my farewells."
"Don't worry about taking any of your tomes," said Anna. "They won't work where you're going. Say goodbye to Archanea, sugar!"
Anna raised her hand, and a swirl of energy enveloped Katarina- like a warp spell, only more urgent, more violent. A little painful, even.
"Thank you," she managed to say as her form dissolved. Chris would miss her. But Chris deserved better... had better. Had everything...
-x-
She saw a gentle glow of red light through her eyelids, and her head rested upon something that smelled of wool and leather. A sheepskin?
Katarina opened her eyes to a surroundings dim and strange. It seemed to be a domed tent or pavilion, with lattice walls covered by fabric. Nearby, a girl was crouching by a firepit in the center of the tent. Her long hair was bound up in a mare's tail, and for a fleeting moment, Katarina thought it was Chris. Then the girl turned her head, and Katarina saw that it wasn't. Couldn't possibly be.
"Are you awake?"
The girl's eyes were large and striking, some intense color between blue and green.
"I found you unconscious on the plains."
Plains. It meant nothing to Katarina. The girl- her name turned out to be Lyn- seemed strangely familiar, for all that Katarina was certain she'd never seen Lyn or anyone like her before. Every detail of the place that she'd landed, from the round tent to the embroidered patterns in Lyn's clothing, was new to Katarina. And yet, there was still something naggingly familiar about the keen eyes that turned on her, so full of questions.
"Your name is Katarina? What an odd name... but, pay me no mind. It is a good name." What seemed odd to Katarina was that they could even understand one another. "I see by your attire that you are a traveler- what brings you to the Sacae plains?"
Katarina- who, for once in her life, had no cover story prepared- never had to answer that question; an intrusion outside the tent proved to be bandits, the bandits were handled through Lyn's swordplay and Katarina's direction, and by the end of that skirmish, Lyn seemed not to need any tales out of Katarina.
"Good work!" she cried, with the dauntless energy of the very young, as she cast a glance over her shoulder at Katarina. "Let's go home."
"Let's go... home," Katarina echoed, low and to herself. Home, already. And she fell in pace behind Lyn. Already home.
So this was her lot: she would stay by the side of this odd girl with the quick sharp movements and the flowing tail of hair until they'd weathered the crisis that Anna had promised. She would guide this girl, and the comrades that would follow, until Lyn would look upon her the way that Lord Marth looked upon Chris. Until Katarina knew, without words being exchanged, that she truly had value.
Until she was the hand and not the tool. Until she fully came into being and so then could pass from life having been something more than a puppet or a rotted-out apple.
She might well fail, and take Lyn and these companions yet unseen with her. The task Anna set before her still sounded impossible. But Katarina had already seen the impossible come to pass, and if this was her justice, she would meet it the way Chris had taught her- headlong. Without fear.
The End. Maybe.
Author's Notes: So, yes. Everyone has their own ideas about the FE7 Tactician, and here's mine- Katarina, the wannabe tactician/wannabe assassin from FE12, gets dropped into Elibe as a means of "doing time" for her various transgressions. It fit, in a way that attempts at writing MyUnit-turned-Tactician stories didn't.
Time Goddess Anna for the win.