Author's note: Wow, apparently I'm suddenly productive with writing again. This has been lingering since last summer, sometime, and was originally started for the prompt "Starry, Starry Sky". I can't be bothered to work the constellation meta out, even though I reused it in another fic, but yes.

As always, thank you for reading! And if I don't reply to your review, it's probably because FFN's messaging has been wonky for me. I really do apologize.

Winter Skies

When Roy's father smiled, there was no dishonesty in it at all. Though even after ten years' time she still knew few people from outside Arcadia's borders, Sophia knew at least that much. There was nothing false in the lines at the corners of his bright eyes, the same clear hue as his son's, or in the creases at the edges of his thin lips. He might have been many things in his near-fifty years, but Eliwood of Pherae was not a liar – at least, he was not at that moment.

The illness that had nearly claimed his life, or so Sophia heard from the talk in the castle, had left him looking for all the world like a quivering husk of a man, a shell of who she was told he once was. He leaned a bit too heavily on his walking stick for a man of his age, and the roots of his fiery hair had begun to shine silver in the moonlight creeping in from the windows. His voice, however, betrayed his remaining strength. Though his words were quiet and carefully measured, they carried the timbre of a man who was not to be trifled with, a man who was no longer anyone's fool.

"Lady Sophia."

She turned at the sound of her name and found herself startled by the movement of, of all things, her own hair. It was done up in a pair of long, thick braids – all the rage in Etruria, she was told. Though the handmaidens insisted it was not only fashionable, but quite practical, she couldn't seem to get used to the way it bunched at her shoulders and caught at her neck.

"Lord Eliwood," she answered when she saw who it was, trying and failing to match the careful volume of his voice. As he closed the distance between them, Sophia could hear the light rasps of his breaths, quiet and strained, with a tight edge, as if he was trying to silence them.

"There's no need for formality. Just 'Eliwood' is fine." He smiled slightly again, his tired eyes creasing into half-moons, as if he had forgotten that he had called her "lady" just a moment before. "We are family, aren't we?"

There was something familiar about his words, as if he'd said something like them once before, but Sophia had never seen the past. She could never be sure if the feeling of repetition was a sign of things that once were or things that might someday be. The thought left her as Eliwood rested one worn, fragile hand at the edge of the window.

". . . Family. Yes."

Sophia knew the stars that shone above Castle Pherae were the same ones she had always known. She could track the same patterns – the tail of the Great Dragon, the ears of the Desert Hare, the curled pincers of the Scorpion and the curve of the Maiden's hips. They were the same as always, even in the harsh, damp chill of the winter air. She'd become accustomed during her time in Pherae to the smell of the ocean wafting through her window, the gray of the skies before a heavy storm, the salt in the breeze and the thickness to the summer air, but she wasn't sure she'd ever get used to winter.

"The sky is clear tonight," Eliwood said, as if he thought Sophia blind. "A nicer night than I expected it might be. It's a good omen for tomorrow. I'm glad to see it." He stared up at the sky, and Sophia thought she could see his still bright eyes tracing the paths between the stars. "You'll get to sleep soon, I hope? I imagine you're quite restless, ah-" He closed his eyes and took a moment to simply breathe. Sophia could hear the light rasp in his chest.

"Forgive me," he said as soon as he'd recovered, and Sophia only nodded.

"It. . . it is truly an honor to be welcomed into your family in. . . in this fashion," she murmured, after a long stretch of silence between them. "I never expected this, and. . ."

"It's not quite what I had expected, either," Eliwood answered with a chuckle that came up dry and scraping, more like the sands of Nabata than the oceans Sophia saw in his eyes. "It's a little ironic, in honesty. . . you said you were from. . . Arcadia, was it?"

The pause was dishonest. He never would have had to stop for the name. Sophia remembered seeing him, not in the present, but in a long-past future. He had stood in that desert himself, cape whipping in the bitter winds, squinting against the grit hitting his face and the sun scorching his fair skin. Sophia knew.

". . .Yes."

"I know a bit about the place. Only a bit, mind you." Eliwood's hands drummed absently on the railing, a shadow of the sort of amusement a small child might enjoy. "You. . . you'll be staying with Roy for some time, won't you?"

Sophia turned away from him, away from the sky, and down to the floor. She counted the polished tiles beneath them, one, two, three, leading out from the terrace and back inside, where she knew a fire would be burning for Eliwood's benefit, and more servants would be waiting for her, attending to her last night as a simple maiden.

"A long time. Yes. As long as I can."

". . .Longer than Roy has, am I correct?"

Roy was young. Young for a lord, young for a groom, young for a human. But there was little use lying. Eliwood had not truly lied to her, and the stars were not dishonest, either. Though she had names for them brought from Nabata, they had not truly changed, and it would not do well to try to deceive them. Never would she be as old as they were, but sometimes she wondered if she might come close.

"Many times longer. Not as long as some have, but. . . yes."

Though she did not look up from the floor beneath her feet, from the tips of her heavy braids swinging back only a hand's breadth away from it, she felt Eliwood's fingers on her shoulder. She knew their skin was like crepe paper wrapped around delicate bounds, but for only a moment she could imagine what his grasp might have been like when he stood tall and brave against the desert heat – firm, assertive, but gentle. Like his son's.

"As I thought." He gazed out beyond her, tracing the stars again, more intently this time, as if searching for something specific. "For your sake, I am sorry. Truly. But. . . for my son's. . . forgive me. For him, I am glad."

Sophia did not, could not answer, but could not bring herself to leave his side just yet. She tried to follow the way he watched the sky above, ignoring the faint numbness in her fingers and the biting at her cheeks.

"The Great Dragon is my favorite constellation, you know," Eliwood said more lowly after a while. He pointed to the same place Sophia knew it in for that season, up in the far northern reaches, its long tail curling around where the moon had risen that night. "I hear it's one of the few they've kept the same – is that so?"

Sophia made a small sound, the sort of demure "mm" she'd heard Roy's grandmother make when she approved of something. She'd made that sound when she saw the gown Sophia was to wear the next day – "mm, lovely," quiet but sincere.

"I like to think, somehow, it watches over us all. Like they say the saints do." He drummed the railing again in quiet rhythm, timing the short pauses for breath between his words. "It's childish of me, I know, to believe something like that with the way history went, but. . . ah, forgive an old man, won't you?" Despite the shortness of his breaths and the starlight catching in his graying hairs, Sophia could not think of Eliwood as old. Dignified, experienced, even wise, perhaps, but she did not see an end in his future, not for some time yet. "I merely hope, even when the sun rises, it might watch over you both. Tomorrow, and longer. For as long as you have and more."

She finally looked up again. Not for the first time, and likely, not for the last, she wished she could see what had come before, if only so she might glimpse what caused the faint sadness she caught etched at the edges of Eliwood's smile.

"I. . . hope so as well."