Disclaimer: Surprise, surprise, I don't own Fire Emblem. You're all shocked, I'm sure.
Warnings: Character death, implied Mist/Rolf in a strictly past-tense sense, select spoilers from the final chapters of the game. IF YOU HAVEN'T BEATEN RADIANT DAWN, TURN BACK NOW! THIS CONTAINS THE SORTS OF SPOILERS THAT CAN AND PROBABLY WILL RUIN THE GAME FOR YOU!
Were any of you as disappointed with the game's ending as I was? Sure, everything was neatly tied up in the end, but… Ike just up and left everyone. I can understand why from a plot perspective… tidies things up nicely and makes it impossible to write a third and probably very bad sequel… but it just felt so grossly out of character to me. Not that he left… I can understand that his newfound Savior of the World status would probably drive him nuts very quickly… but that he left the company. The Greil Mercenaries were very much Ike's family, he names them as such several times in PoR, and Ike did not strike me as the sort of person who would lightly abandon his family, regardless of the reason. So, here's my take on what really happened after the game from the perspective of the character I felt would be hurt most by our hero's sudden departure. Enjoy. (Also keep in mind that I might make a longer fic based on the idea presented in this oneshot if I can manage to stomach/find a way around making it a crossover or inventing a slew of OC's to fight against…)
Reflections of a Valkyrie
It struck many people who knew her as odd that Mist never found herself a husband. Oh, there were suitors, heavens yes. As if her pale reddish-brown hair, porcelain skin, easy smile and large, soulful blue eyes weren't enough to attract men, she was the younger sister of Ike the Hero, after all. Men who sought fame and beauty flocked to her like hungry vultures. Even a few who were interested in Mist as the person came and left empty-handed, for Mist had learned her lesson about men the hard way and did not need a third repetition. Men could be cared for, even cherished… but never relied on, not like that, because one day they would leave her all alone and she knew, deep in the part of her heart that she never let anyone else see anymore that being abandoned like that again might just kill her. And they all left, without exception like her father, felled before his time by the sword of the Black Knight… or rather, General Zelgius. Her brother too, so bored by peace and prosperity that he fled in the night without even saying goodbye to their faces and leaving only a brief not saying that he and Soren were going off to explore distant lands, and that the Greil Mercenaries were hereby officially disbanded. Funny, how one little letter had scattered her family to the four winds. Funnier still that she had begged it back from Titania after the ex-knight had resumed her service in Melior. Funniest of all was that she hadn't burned it yet… although, it was the only thing she had that proved her brother had ever existed as a person and not an increasingly-inflated legend.
If she got married, her husband, whoever he might have been, would do the same thing to her new family, either with his death or wanderlust or the thousand and one other faults that bring marriages crashing down in smoke and dust.
As she grew older she found her eyes lingering on the children of her friends, even the children of strangers… but surely, even if she did have a child she would have had a son with her rotten luck. She knew if she did the boy would probably run off after an adventure by the time he was old enough to swing a sword without tripping over it. It would be in his blood after all, and she supposed she wouldn't be able to blame her hypothetical child. Still, the perfect loneliness of her endless wandering started to ache a bit, especially when she visited Rolf in the village where he had settled down with his wife near the old Greil Keep and had handed out handmade gifts to his children. As she was giving a doll to his youngest daughter she realized that if she hadn't made such an effort of rebuffing his advances and pushing him away that these could be her children, and that thought had hurt more than it really should have. It hurt enough that she only stayed the night and left as early the next morning as she could without being rude, and she felt that Rolf's bride breathed a sigh of relief at her retreating back. When she was on the road she told herself that the woman who shared Rolf's home wasn't going to be happy forever. She'd seen that look in Rolf's blue eyes that she'd seen in Shinon's almost black ones so many times, that flickering along the horizon line in search of a target. Rolf would leave his home, sometime soon. Such a sleepy little village couldn't hold him. Mist saw this and understood. He was, after all, a man. What else could be expected?
Unlike all the other times she'd told herself similar things, this didn't make her feel any better… but really, she only had herself to blame.
Just like she only had herself to blame for misinterpreting the strain in Queen Elincia and Lady Lucia's smiles when she came to Melior to visit Titania and Oscar and the hovering nature of her old mercenary companions. And who could she blame but herself for doing nothing but wonder whenever she saw Bastian muttering to himself as he drifted through the halls of the castle on the rare occasions that he was there, with bits of worry and frustration filtering through his normally genial expression? How had she failed to see the deeper meaning when she saw the way Boyd's smile went unnaturally stiff whenever stories of 'Great Ike the Hero' were spouted off in his presence? Or the idiotic way she had laughed but never questioned when Rhys triple checked at night in the old keep to make absolutely certain that all the entrances were locked and barred. She could have gone for a visit to the palace during those three years she had lived in relative obscurity in Nevassa, especially when she'd seen that inexplicable sadness in Micaiah's eyes. She could have said something about Titania's somberness when they had traveled together to visit her father's grave in Gallia, she could have pressed for an answer when the paladin had opened her mouth or started a conversation with a stricken look on her face and then turned away from the fire or claimed a need to scout ahead for brigands or some other hostiles. She'd thought Titania was simply missing Ike like she was.
She had no one to blame but herself for being so very, very wrong.
It wasn't until fifteen years after the war when she'd been fretting with a Recover staff over wounds that were stubbornly refusing to close that she finally learned the truth. Titania had always been stubborn and despite the extent and undoubtable pain of her injuries she was conscious for her final moments. Around horrible wracking coughs that brought up bursts of blood she was able to tell Mist of a system that her father had rigged up when he had first formed the company, a subtle method of imperfections that could be easily inserted into a letter to allow the recipient to know if it had been compromised. And that, she said, according to several somewhat out-of-place inkblots and the tear that had been put in the upper right hand corner told the senior members of the Greil Mercenaries that their leader's final message to them had been written under duress. In that single moment when the woman who had been almost a mother to her since her own had expired, her bone-pale lips spattered the same brilliant crimson as her long, banner-like braid that had fluttered across more battlefields than anyone cared to count breathed her last, Mist found it in herself to hate Titania. Something much like nausea rushed through her a moment later, taking away that nasty feeling, but not the memory of it. It was the first time Mist could remember truly hating anything, and it shook her to her very core.
It was funny, in reflection, how she had never thought anything odd about those scattered blotches. Sure, Ike's penmanship left something to be desired, but it had never been that bad. Funnier still was that she had somehow managed to forget that the slightly old-fashioned curve on some of the letterings that cropped up at random was more typical of Soren's handwriting than her brother's.
Funniest of all was that she was choosing these things to think about as the Rexcaliber spell's secondary incantation came careening down at her, but the backlash of the first strike had felled her horse and pinned her left leg underneath the dying animal's bulk. Maybe if she still had her sword she could have cut her way out, but it gleamed mockingly a mere foot out of her reach. She wasn't going anywhere. She supposed that this was when people normally prayed, but Yune hadn't struck her as the sort of goddess who listened with patience to people's regrets and pleading. No, Yune was the sort of goddess who helped people who were already trying to help themselves, and there simply wasn't any way to do so in this situation.
She wondered if…