Author's Note - So, I'm not entirely sure where this came from, but I had an itch to write it, and it sort of wrote itself after I really started. I don't particularly ship this couple, but I thought I could see it happening as it does here. I thought it would provide a jumping-off point for eventual Lissa and Maribelle endgame, gets Lissa thinking a little later after 'Marth's' reveal.
Anywho, read on if you dare! And please, any and all reviews or comments are welcome.
A Cold Feroxi Night
Though her rooms was large in comparison to her expectations, Lissa still found them to feel much too small as she paced their length. The building that their guide had led them to to spend the night while they awaited an audience with the Khan had looked like a barracks from the outside. All imposing stone and simple straight lines. Long and squat, it would have looked right at home outside of a drill ground.
And that would have been fine. Lissa was perfectly happy in a barracks, spent half of her time in the Shepherds' barracks, in fact, much to Frederick's consternation and muttered frustration.
But the inside turned out to be appointed quite nicely, very appropriately to their station. She wondered if it was just where foreign dignitaries were normally housed, or if it was some sort of apology for the misunderstanding at the Regna Ferox border. Maybe it was the Khan's personal villa they were using. If it was, then she fully bought the idea that they focused more on strength and practicality than diplomacy and normal noble fanciness.
But as nice as her rooms were with their deep four-poster bed, plush couch, enormous fireplace, and numerous padded chairs arrayed before a vanity with a great mirror that reached the vaulted ceiling, it somehow felt confining.
As her circuit of the room brought her back near the door she paused and stared at it, her eyes narrowed slightly as if it would let her see what lay beyond it. She stood there for a moment, considering the relative cold of the hallway and the warmth of the fire roiling at her back.
Still she itched to leave the rooms, and after another moment of thought for what Frederick would say to her wandering a foreign country's barracks in the middle of the night, made her decision.
"We're guests," she said aloud to herself, if only to fill the silence. "We're supposed to look around and enjoy the sights, aren't we?" Lissa kicked one of the pieces of luggage over that had been on the baggage train and dug around in it, eventually producing a pair of great fuzzy slippers.
"'Please, rest up and enjoy what few luxuries we offer.'" She dropped her voice as much as she could, imitating the dour servant who had shown them their respective rooms. "I'm just checking their other luxuries," Lissa assured herself as she slipped her feet into the fuzzy slippers.
She wriggled her toes in satisfaction and snatched the great heavy robe up off the end of the bed. She shrugged into it, her slender frame and silken slip and nightgown disappearing beneath the heavy fur and layered fabrics. Humming happily to herself she belted it tightly and snuggled down into it for a moment, then stepped up to the door.
Her hand hesitated on the heavy bronze handle. "It'll be fiiiiine," she said to no-one in particular, her voice a little smaller this time. With a deep breath to steel herself, she pushed down on the handle and swung the door inward.
A cold wind swept into the room, swirling around her ankles and sending icy fingers up the bottom of her slip. Lissa spared a thought for grabbing a pair of leggings, but the thought of trying to find them among all of the luggage made her shiver more than the wind and so she dismissed the idea and stepped out into the hallway.
The stark hallway was no less uninviting than she remembered it being from a few hours before. Long windows, their glass frozen over at the edges, let in what little light of the moon and the stars was available, as well as a good deal more cold than was strictly necessary. As the door closed behind her, and the warmth of the fire suddenly became a distant memory, Lissa pulled her robe tighter about herself, the fluffy collar riding up around her ears and nose.
She peered over the collar down each side of the hallway. Both ends eventually terminated in darkness that not even the occasional burning sconces could disperse. Doors identical to her own stood at even intervals in either direction. For all she knew, it could have been infinite, or perhaps looped back upon itself, it all looked so identical.
It was probably practical or better for defense, or something like that, but she could only wrinkle her nose and declare it both a little confusing and somewhat ugly. But then, perhaps that was the point.
After another moment's indecision, Lissa took a long step toward the center of the hallway. Her slippered feet found soft carpet, rather than the cold hard stone of the rest of the hall, and she picked her right -at random- and began to walk.
Lissa had no destination in mind, or even anything weighing any heavier than usual on her thoughts, only a need to be moving and exploring. Who knew when she would get to be in Regna Ferox next, particularly when they were unprepared for her arrival? If she came next time, as part of a proper diplomatic party or something, they'd probably put them up somewhere different.
It would probably be her last time to explore this place!
Her slippers made no noise on the thick pile of the carpet, but she suspected the thick stone walls and heavy wooden doors would have muffled anything she did anyway, whether she will it or no.
Just as she was beginning to despair of the hallway ever ending (and she still had not seen the stairwell that they had ascended by), a wall and corner loomed out of the darkness. On either side of the odd diagonally positioned door in the corner, wildly flickering sconces burned low, doing their best to illuminate the area. With a low whistling noise, wind whipped through the doorway and into the hallway, frosting the nearest windows on even the inside.
Lissa stared at it for a moment, weighing the pros and cons of finding out where the doorway led that there was so much wind, and of staying away from the snow and bluster of whatever it was. Almost by their own will, her feet began to pad toward the doorway, whispering on the stone as she left the carpet.
"Might as well see what it is, right?" Lissa murmured to herself as she stuck her head in the doorway. There were no sconces inside, but after a moment her eyes adjusted and she found a circular staircase cut into the stone, leading both upwards and down. It was not the staircase they had come up, but it surely led to the same general areas.
The stairs were narrow, only wide enough for probably a single man in armor to mount at a time, and curved sharply enough to make anything longer than a sizable dagger unfeasible to use, so it seemed likely that it was a guard tower at one of the building's corners.
Unlike Chrom, she hadn't gotten to see anything from any higher position than the edge of the border outpost where they had inadvertently brawled with the Feroxi defense forces. She was gripped by a sudden irresistible curiosity (a specific one, rather than the broad one that she normally suffered under), and found herself striding up the stairs. She trailed one hand along the inner wall, as much to keep a figurative eye on it in the darkness as for the sensation.
The light began to brighten by the time she had decided there was no way to tell how many floors she had gone up, and her pace picked up until she could pop her head out of the rectangular hole at the top of the staircase.
The tower spread out around her, sitting directly between the walkways along the walls that connected to it. Crenelations sat atop the walls on both sides, surrounding her like the teeth of some great monster. Above her was nothing but swirling gray, not quite uniform in color but not distinct enough to tell one cloud apart from another, or even from the sky itself. Somewhere past the gray haze the moon lurked, no doubt, but she couldn't see it.
And stark against the gray was a lean figure, leaning against one of the stony teeth. Lissa squinted at it, as if it would make it any easier to discern who it was (which was madness, as she could only recognize maybe three people in the entire country).
But to her shock, she thought she did.
A slice of darkness, the figure was slender and about half a head taller than Lissa, with hair dark like her brother Chrom's, but somehow possessed of a corona of shimmering blue-black in the dim light. There must have been a moon back there behind the clouds somewhere, the way it seemed to shine upon him. A heavier cloak than last she had seen him wearing hung about him, blown against him so that it clung to his body by the wind at his back.
The tip of a sword fought back against the wind, pushing against the cloak and making certain that none could mistake the young man's possession of a weapon.
But what truly made him unmistakable, different from any other slender, mysterious swordsman, was the dark blue tip of the mask that she could just make out from where she stood, most of the way down the staircase.
"Marth?"
He didn't respond, and Lissa frowned. 'Oh, probably the wind.' It was blowing toward Marth, but still had maybe whipped her words away. Gripping her cloak more tightly, suddenly acutely aware of just how little she was wearing beneath it, Lissa scrambled out of the stairs and onto the battlements proper.
The wind snapped at her, seeming to grip her by the edges of her cloak and drag her toward the edge of the tower. She wasn't quite sure if she screamed, but she seemed to have done something to draw attention. As she stumbled toward one of the gaps between the crenelations, Marth spun around, his mouth open in surprise, shock, or perhaps a surprised cry. It was hard to tell with the wind in her ears.
Before she could quite make it to -and over- the edge of the tower, Marth was between her and its edge, strong arms wrapped around her shoulders. Her momentum carried her against him, and she was close enough to hear him grunt when his back struck the stone.
She supposed there ought to have been some sort of feeling of panic, of lightheadedness as she came down from fear, but in the shelter of his arms, with her face pressed against his shoulder, she could feel only warmth and comfort.
"M-Miss?" Lissa's head snapped up as she realized her arms had wrapped around Marth's waist, the hilt of his sword pinned against his hip. Her head clipped the young man's chin and he groaned again as Lissa stumbled back away from him, into the wind once more.
"I'm so sorry!" Lissa raised her hands halfway to her mouth, as if to cover it as a proper lady should have, then back down halfway to her sides as she reached for her staff, which naturally wasn't there. Then she stepped closer again and wrung her hands, suddenly not quite sure what to do with them.
When Marth lowered his hands and worked his jaw a little, as if to test it was still working, she could already see the shadow of a bruise forming on his otherwise unblemished skin. At least she knew what to do with that. Stepping forward again, she reached out and cupped his chin with one hand. She could feel him start to pull away, whether out of surprise or pain at having her reach out and grip his bruise she wasn't sure.
She didn't try to pull him back, just leaned in toward him in pursuit as her eyes fluttered closed and she called to the magic that she normally didn't need to use outside of battle.
Lissa could feel the warmth flood her, soft and light, like the sensation of a sunbeam traveling from her chest, down her arm to sink into Marth's skin. Normally she needed the help of a staff or similar tool to focus and strengthen the magic, but for such a small wound she could manage well enough without.
They stood like that for a long moment, Lissa leaning against Marth, keeping him pinned against the edge of the wall. One of her hands had fallen to his hip, just above the hilt of his sword to balance herself, and the other lingered along his jaw. Their hips pressed together lightly, and she couldn't distinguish the warmth of the magic from the warmth of Marth's body until the magic had faded.
Taking a deep breath (not having realized she had held it in the first place) Lissa's eyes fluttered open and she found herself staring into the very near face of Marth's mask.
Well. She couldn't decide if it was more awkward to be staring at a mask, or to be staring deeply into Marth's eyes. She squinted a little bit. 'How does he even see out of that thing? It has slits, but they're so…small? Limited.' She thought about asking, to draw attention away from her own suddenly pounding heart and hot cheeks, but she noticed the stain of red on Marth's own, beneath his mask, and she felt a little better.
"S-sorry about that," she breathed instead, slowly stepping backward, her hands dropping from Marth's face and hip. Immediately, Lissa missed the warmth of him against her fingertips. She licked her lips, dry for nerves or chapped by the wind she couldn't tell. For something to do, she began to wring her hands again and looked over Marth's shoulder into the gray distance. "What, uh, are you doing up here, anyway?"
Marth coughed and reached up with one hand to rub at his jaw again, then dropped it and offered Lissa a tentative smile. "Thank you, for the healing, A-, ah, Miss." Lissa's eyes flicked to his face again, then back into the distance.
She could point out that it had been her own fault in the first place, but decided against it. "I came here to think. And to just…look." There was a wistful quality to Marth's voice as he turned back around and leaned against the parapets. "Where I come from, there is nothing like this. Nothing that's so," he paused, the muscles in his jaw tight as Lissa walked up to stand beside him, though her gaze had returned to his face. "Nothing so pure, and clean."
He motioned out vaguely at the rolling hills of snow, gray mountains in the distance covered with the stuff as well. There was a forest in the distant south, somewhere in Ylisse, Lissa knew. "It's beautiful."
Lissa peered up at Marth, struck by the dreamy but sad tone in his voice. It caught in his throat, not quite as if he were holding back tears, but as if there were some lump there, that he had to talk around.
It seemed a little too personal, too emotional, for any real response, so Lissa settled on a simple nod and turning back to appreciate the view as well. They stood like that for a long few moments, though it took less than half that time for Lissa to grow bored of the view. It was pretty, but so samey, too. One snow-covered hill was a lot like another, and there weren't even any animals around to watch. Or tracks in the snow, outside of the main road that lead up to the building. 'I wonder what they hunt,' she pondered absently, her gaze returning first to Marth's gloved hands on the wall, then up his arms and to his face once more.
Standing beside him, she could almost see beneath the edge of his mask. She had a brief glimpse, little more than an impression, of heavy eyelashes over dark eyes, before he turned to look at her.
Caught staring, Lissa froze, embarrassed heat climbing back up from her neck and over her face once more. This time, when Marth spoke, his voice was back to its normal depth and cadence.
"What are you doing out here, Miss?" The emphasis he put on the title made her wonder; they had never introduced themselves, but he certainly seemed to put a lot of weight into the word. Did he even realize she was a princess?
"Ah, I was just, um, exploring." Lissa clasped her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels a little bit, doing her best to avoid looking at Marth. "It's the first time I've been somewhere like this, too. All the snow and stuff." She wrinkled her nose. "And the cold. I don't know when we're leaving, but we probably won't be here long. So I thought I'd poke around a little bit." She caught her lower lip between her teeth and looked up at Marth sheepishly. "I really didn't mean to intrude on anything. Or, uh, almost push you off the wall."
Lissa peered down the side of the tower once more, though this time with her hands firmly locked on the stone wall, and shivered. 'Nope, definitely didn't plan on that.'
"Actually," she jerked her head back up and Marth flinched away from her to avoid getting hit again. She hadn't realized that he had stepped closer when she had leaned over; it made her smile. "That's the second time you've saved me, isn't it?"
Marth stared at her for a moment, and she could just imagine him blinking behind his mask, then he looked away, back into the grayness. "I, ah, was just doing what anyone would, in my place," he answered, though he sounded sheepish or embarrassed.
'I had no idea how hard it was to read someone when you can't see their face!' Lissa shifted a little, side to side, trying to see further beneath the mask, with little luck. "I don't know if anyone else has been in that place," she pointed out. Marth looked back at her, and she decided to picture him quirking one eyebrow. "At least, I've never seen anyone else pop out of a portal way up in the sky, then throw themselves between a crazy monster-thing and a complete stranger."
Lissa cocked her head a little. "You know, there's probably a better way for you to save people than just throwing yourself between them and bad stuff," she pointed out. "Monsters, short walls…"
Marth chuckled as she trailed off with a shrug. "Maybe. I'll pause next time and try to think of a better way."
Lissa's eyebrows rose way up and she put a hand to her chest, surprised at how warm it felt in comparison to her fingers. She had almost forgotten what the temperature was outside the thick walls. "My Lord Marth, are you teasing me?" she asked, suitably aghast, before they both dissolved into laughter.
It was almost eerie how comfortable Marth's company was, how easy he was to talk to. Normally she felt like she had to prove herself, somehow, and especially if anyone else had risked their lives to save her, twice. No-one should need to save her, she should have been able to take care of herself!
But it was easier, somehow, to not feel that pressing need with him.
"Maybe a little," he admitted after their laughter had faded into the wind. He offered her a smile. "Thank you," he continued, "for the laugh. There aren't a lot of those where I'm from, either." Low as his voice was, Lissa had to strain to catch the last part, and she wondered if she was supposed to have heard it.
"Well, I should be the one thanking you," she pointed out with a series of sharp nods to back up her point. "You've saved me twice." 'Would he mind if I…? I mean, princesses do it in stories all the time, right?' Her heart thundered as she considered it, loudly enough that she was certain he could hear it, even over the persistent noise of the wind.
"So." She shifted back and forth from one foot to the other, staring down at her slippers and Marth's boots. "So, thank you." She looked up, and this time Marth didn't flinch away. Lissa took it as a good sign as she took a half step closer and tilted her head up. One hand went to the stone wall to help steady her, the other to Marth's waist.
If he realized what was happening, he didn't do anything. Not that there was much he could have done, trapped between her and the wall (again). For the first time in her life (unless she counted that kiss from Maribelle, and that was surely only because Maribelle had had a lot of wine, right?) she felt the warm press of another's lips upon her own.
She had expected a man's to be rougher, somehow, than Maribelle's had been, but Marth's lips were soft and pliant, and if not quite as warm as Maribelle's, that only made sense in the cold like they were.
It would be improper to give him any more than a peck, even considering he had saved her life twice, and it certainly hadn't been her intention to do anything more, but when his lips shifted, as if to form a word, it was almost reflex that had hers moving in return, exploring the changing contours of his lips.
And then he was kissing her back.
The world shrank, her awareness of the gray beyond, the cold stone seeping through her slippers, the wind whipping at the edges of her heavy cloak, until all she knew was the feeling of Marth's hands on her waist, the warmth of his hips against her own, and the softness of his lips.
Without anyone's permission -because dear Naga it would have been a terrible broach of protocol, even for Lissa!- her lips parted and the tip of her tongue brushed against Marth's lips, tentative and curious.
And then her nose brushed the little part of the mask that dipped down over Marth's own nose, and Marth jerked away, his hands leaping from her waist to steady his mask instead.
Lissa realized she was breathing awfully hard, sucking in cold air as if it were, well, air. And then she evaluated what she had been doing and her eyes widened, her face burned, and she raised her hands to cover her mouth. She could almost still feel his lips on her own as she stared at him.
"I'msosorry,Ishouldn'thavedonethat!" she managed to get out in a rush, before spinning on her heel, nearly falling on the slick stone, and running full pelt back down the stairs.
That had not been the kind of late night exploration she had been meaning to make!
Not that she could bring herself to regret it; what were the chances she would ever see the mysterious man, named for the great Hero King himself again?
Lucina stared after Lissa, waiting to see if she would come back up the stairs and into the cold or not. After long moments passed and there was no sign of her reappearance, she paced with measured slowness to the other side of the tower wall and leaned into the wind. With a hand steady by will alone, she reached up to remove her mask, so the wind could better cool her face.
She licked her lips and stared down at the roof tiles that stretched out like a snow-covered plain along the top of the building, and tried to convince herself that everything was okay.
Not only had her aunt kissed her, but she had nearly lost her mask in the process. And Lucina had kissed her back! 'Did she see me? Did she guess? No, that's ridiculous, how could she? Who would guess their future niece would come backward in time, that would be…well it's what I did, but who would think it?' She talked herself in circles for long minutes, trying to convince herself that things were okay.
But then why had Lissa run out so quickly, if she hadn't any idea of who Lucina was? But then, maybe such things were different now, when there was no pressing need to enjoy what little good life gave. In this time, maybe people took their time more, went slower? She supposed without Grima and his shadow, the Risen, bearing down on people all the time, they had the opportunity to savor things, take them slower and draw it out.
Not that Lucina could see a purpose in that, but maybe that was how it was. It wasn't in her time, but she wasn't in her time.
There was also the chance that she was a terrible kisser; she supposed there was little enough data to argue against that.
Though, all that aside, it was for the best! She shook her head, to rattle the thoughts free, and tapped the mask against her forehead as if the beating were a penance. She shouldn't be lamenting that her aunt had stopped kissing her! 'It was good that she stopped when she did,' she told herself with as much an air of finality as she could manage.
Her jaw set, and Lissa's warmth nearly faded from her lips, Lucina settled the mask and the identity of Marth, back upon her face and strode back around to where she had been before.
For life was short, and she intended to enjoy as much of this brief respite as she could.