A/N: I wrote this for Mark of the Asphodel, as a thanks for pinch hitting Nagamas exchange gifts. I'm not sure what kind of thanks a bad end AU like this is, but that's how I roll.

Downpours

It was just before nightfall in the middle of a thunderstorm when Innes caught sight of white wings cutting across the black-clouded sky, nearly a week later than he'd expected. As the pegasus swirled lower, the choppy motion of one wing became clearer —not so bad that it seemed to struggle to stay aloft, but enough that Innes knew he was lucky to see it again at all. Both riders were there, another rare stroke of luck.

Syrene dismounted with the same grace she always had, though her wet clothes and hair stuck to her skin in a way that might make others seem undignified. She lifted her head high despite the dried cuts on her face and tatters at her hems and sleeves, then offered a hand down to the mage who'd ridden behind her. He swayed slightly as he walked past the mount, trying to regain his bearings on solid ground. Innes didn't envy him.

Syrene retained her practiced poise as she bowed, military and precise as she'd been near Frelia's stables, a comfort to her, Innes imagined, as much as it was to him. She lifted the long, heavy cloth-wrapped bundle that had been tied at her mount's side and laid it at his feet.

"They were, as you suspected, in immaculate condition, considering," she said. The mage nodded his agreement and bent to pull the cloth away to reveal the polished metal of a matching spear and sword. They were freshly cleaned, not a stain in sight, but nothing else with them, no bracelets or brooches or other trinkets. Innes knew he'd chosen the right people for the job.

"You've both done very well. Thank you."

When Ephraim had shown up in Kyle's chambers, what felt like so long ago, Kyle had somehow known before he'd said a word what his prince was planning.

"We'll take the fight to Grado," Ephraim whispered, with the kind of casual confidence he tended to use when challenging Kyle for a spar or going on some silly midnight ride for the thrill of it.

Kyle thought of protesting, he'd found he couldn't think of arguing with Ephraim's crooked smile.

Forde coming too had seemed obvious, at the time. There was no way his prince would need only Kyle alone. Sir Orson had been a surprise, even to Ephraim, but the older knight hadn't left much choice.

"All I have to do is awaken Sir Seth," Orson had said. It was the only time Kyle remembered Ephraim relenting.

Kyle could have raised the alarm, too. It hadn't occured to him then, but when he thought back, he could imagine exactly what might have happened —King Fado reprimanding all of them, but especially his son, ordering a personal guard to keep the prince safe at home, all of them sitting and waiting for the invasion they knew was inevitable.

And what then?

Would four more men have been enough to defend the king and Renais? Would they have run like General Seth had been forced to? Or would they all have died there at Fado's side? Perhaps it might have been better like that, if the end result was all the same, for none of them to ever know what was ahead.

And Kyle would stop there, because he could see it all so easily, and thinking of how nice it might have been for his prince to die in his own home instead of how he had was enough to bring him worse nightmares than usual.

The lance was absolutely a masterwork, probably the finest Innes had ever seen. It was heavier than he remembered Vidofnir, but not unwieldy —even delicate in places, like the detailed engravings up the hilt and the intricate grooves etched into its head, all polished and scrubbed clean so it almost looked unused.

Kyle wouldn't touch it. He wouldn't even look at it for more than a second.

"I can't take this, Your Highness. I beg of you, give it to someone else. Please." Innes forced himself not to look away and studied instead —the way Kyle's fists balled at his sides, the shadowed rings around his eyes, the lines at his mouth and brow that hadn't been there when Innes had first seen him at Ephraim's side in Frelia. He'd kept his hair decently groomed, as much as any of them could, but each flash of lightning showed the way he'd let the dark stubble at his hollow cheeks grow.

Kyle was hardly the only one capable of wielding a weapon like this. Syrene could have easily taken it herself, or Tana, had she not Vidofnir. Of course there were the few remaining Gradans, too. And though Renais' forces grew scarcer by the day, Kyle was still not her last knight.

But Innes still remembered the days leading up to what they'd all thought would be their last battle, and the days immediately afterward, almost as vividly as he recalled the day itself. He knew Kyle would as well. He decided not to say that.

"I know of no one alive more suited to wield Siegmund, Sir Kyle."

Kyle winced at alive. Innes had known he would.

Kyle had offered Ephraim his own cloak, drier than the prince's, more times than he could count. Ephraim refused him every time, though his matted hair stuck to his face and his shivers showed more than he seemed to realize. The rain hadn't let up since they first escaped Renvall, but the prince had matched their pace to its intensity, paying no mind to the thickening mud or shaking of the trees.

The sky flashed white with lightning ahead, followed seconds later by the first low rumble of thunder. It was Forde who'd finally suggested they stop and rest, claiming his papers were getting " a touch damp", though Kyle could clearly see that his whole bag had been soaked through for hours.

"I should have seen it coming," Ephraim said later that night. Forde had somehow found sleep, but Kyle couldn't manage. He kept thinking of all the nights he'd passed his night watch shift off to Sir Orson, every one an easy chance to just slit his prince's throat, take the bracelet, and run.

"No," Kyle answered after a long pause. "We should have —Forde and I. You have... much on your mind, we know."

Ephraim hadn't replied at first. He'd stayed quiet and still, watching the rain pool around the tentposts and swirl between the hollows of the tree roots. When he finally spoke again, it wasn't about Sir Orson.

"What they said in Renvall... it can't be true, right?"

They'd heard rumors about Renais' fall for weeks, but it hadn't been until one of Grado's generals had claimed it to Ephraim's face that he'd looked even a bit concerned. Now, with Ephraim alone, Kyle could see the way the fierceness of his gaze faltered and his hands shook from more than the fog and cold.

It would be easy to say of course not, sire, to pretend that everything in Renais had to be all right, that there was no chance it wasn't just a lie intended to rob the prince of his blazing confidence. But Kyle couldn't lie, not with Ephraim meeting his eyes like that.

"I can't say, sire."

Kyle never saw his prince cry, but in hindsight, he knew that was the closest he'd ever come, watching Ephraim shudder against the storming winds and rain outside and clench his fists in the folds of his drenched, muddy cape. And if Ephraim hadn't broken the silence then to lean in and kiss Kyle, harsh and biting and raw, Kyle thought he might have done it himself, though he'd never know that, either.

Innes extended the weapon toward Kyle, waiting, watching. Kyle still made no motion toward it, though he finally raised his gaze away from the mud to meet Innes' eye with almost familiar ferocity.

"With all due respect... I will not take it. I cannot."

Innes kept his expression neutral, holding back the temptation to sigh or purse his lips. Sentiment wouldn't keep their dwindling numbers alive. L'Arachel might have been able to inspire morale with her never-ending exuberance, but neither hope nor enthusiasm kept the undead at bay. If the gods had any fondness for their chosen saint's descendant, they had yet to show it. Innes didn't plan to wait.

"Weapons like this one are vital to our survival. And to our eventual victory." Innes wasn't sure what victory might look like, this long after defeat. A warm bed and a good meal, perhaps, or just a night without fearing that he might not wake up. "I believe your king and queen might have agreed."

Kyle faltered slightly at that. His teeth trapped the edge of his lower lip as he moved to reach, but he pulled back quickly and shook his head again.

"My king would not have wanted this."

He likely would have objected to dying, too, Innes thought, but he bit back the retort.

"If you won't take it, I'll give it to someone else–"

"No."

There was that flash of anger again, lasting this time, and Innes could see why king and knight had gotten along so well.

"What would you have me do with it, then? A silent, useless shrine to the two of them? Do you think –" he thought of they, but it wasn't right, no —"do you think he would have wanted that?"

Kyle's mouth pulled down into a tight, controlled frown. "I would have gone to retrieve this," he said, avoiding the question.

And you would have died trying to bury what was left of him, like your general did. Innes didn't say that, either. Kyle knew it well enough, hadn't followed Seth when he left, even though everyone had known where he was going.

"It's here now, and I'm offering you one last chance, as your commander, to avenge them with it. He would want you to have it."

Kyle tightened his jaw, but extended one hand and grasped the lance, then dropped to a bow.

"It is an honor," Innes reminded him, but Kyle did not rise. It took him a moment to realize that Kyle was not bowing for his benefit.

It had thundered the night before the battle, too. The fresh scent of rainfall had reminded Kyle of the rivers that wound through the village of his childhood, so different from the sulfur and horror of the forest, enough that he could already envision himself returning there, if only for a day.

He'd tended to his weapons and his armor, set out his supplies for the early morning march, though he suspected he might not sleep much at all. Nor, he knew, would he be alone in his sleepless night. His prince —no, he had to remind himself still, his king —had that distant look in his eyes in the afternoon and hadn't left his sister's side as far as Kyle had seen since the departure from Rausten.

And Kyle had been right. Ephraim had come to him late in the night, his hair and cloak drenched by rain though it had been hours since he'd set up his tent. He didn't smile, didn't speak Kyle's name, but Kyle had folded him into an embrace nonetheless, hoping he could offer at least some small comfort.

In hindsight, there was so much he could have done. He could have at least tried to convince Ephraim to stay behind the next day, slipped something into his wine, tied him down, something. Forde would have supported it. Even Queen Eirika might have, though of course he couldn't ask her now.

But he couldn't, then —Ephraim had mumbled something like I have to do it between sharp wine-tasting kisses and Kyle had known exactly what he meant, known he couldn't fix it but also known he couldn't take this last thing away. And Ephraim had ridden into danger so much graver, with so much less to protect him. It had always ended all right. There was no way they wouldn't be victorious, not with a leader like that.

When he thought back to that night, he remembered little —rolling thunder overhead, his king damp and warm in his arms, a secure feeling that felt surreal in hindsight. There were so many ballads about if I'd known this was our last time, but none of them matched the strange emptiness Kyle kept trying to grasp again.

If I'd known, I would have —

And he'd stop there, half because it was futile, and half because he still didn't know what he might have done.

Giving Sieglinde to Amelia had been a harder choice than the first one Innes had made, but in the end, he was glad he'd done it. She was young, still, and part of him had wanted to send her home as he'd wanted to send Tana home, but it wasn't as if there was much for any of them to go back to anymore. Word of Frelia's ultimate fall had reached them not two weeks previous, and Grado was still due for catastrophe. And still, the gods offered no miracles, no stones to replace those lost, no holy power to stop what had been set in motion. All he could do was hold their remaining numbers together and gather every boon he could think of, hoping to somehow hold out longer than the gods seemed to want.

He wasn't completely sure he'd done the right thing with Siegmund, not yet. He could have offered that to Amelia instead, or to the other remaining knight of Renais who was always at her side. The last thing they needed was a relic like that kept as a sentimental souvenir, or buried as substitute for a ruined royal body, a risk he knew he was taking given what he knew of the highest ranked remaining knight of Renais.

Innes tried not to think too much on it as he readied his bow and tucked a dagger at his side. The hordes were unstoppable, all of them knew that, with their own dead only contributing to their numbers. But at the very least, cutting them down seemed to pause it for a while, and perhaps one such pause woul be enough to strike at the heart of it all. No such chance had come yet, but it had to, it had to.

Innes was halfway through a draw of Nidhogg's string when he heard it —the sickening slick of rotting flesh, just behind him. He dropped the bow into the thick mud beneath him and turned in time to see the claws coming for his throat, but too late to fumble for the dagger at his hip—

Siegmund's tip jutted through the creature's skeletal chest. It fell instantly, and for half a second, Innes tried to think of a taunt to save face in front of Ephraim before he remembered.

"Don't be so careless, Your Highness," Kyle said as he offered a hand up. "We can't lose more than we already have."

Innes swallowed back his words and nodded, tightly, silently, understanding.