Author's Note:
Hello everyone and welcome to a Gatrie focused story set not long after Radiant Dawn. In this AU, Gatrie is a giant, separated from his people and unaware of their culture. I hope you enjoy the short opening chapter.
Prologue
To Gatrie, the world had always been small.
Even as a child, he'd been blatantly large, and far beyond the size of any beorc. Not even laguz, who could get quite big, matched his size, and it was clear to all that he was no beorc.
He was a giant.
Where he came from was a mystery, he'd simply turned up, confused and amnesiac, wandering the wilds as a toddler. Gramps and Grandma had found him and taken him in, despite the obvious difference in race, and they'd done their best to raise him, finding ways to get over the practical problems doing so presented.
In time, old age claimed them, and Gatrie found himself alone, so when grief was done, he set out, searching for the truth about himself.
Sadly, all he found was fearful people.
He couldn't enter most towns and villages, their inhabitants were, understandably, scared of him, and numerous times he'd been met with pitchforks and torches brandished at him. When this happened, he always beat a swift retreat, not wishing to harm anyone and knowing that trying to talk it out wouldn't work.
Then he met Commander Greil.
Initially, the man and his mercenary group had been hired to kill him, by a noble that had decided that a giant's head would make a good decoration. However, they'd been told that Gatrie had been attacking and destroying villages and the Commander was less than pleased to discover that he'd been lied to and was expected to murder an innocent.
In the end, Greil refused to finish the contract and when the noble kicked up a fuss, the whole thing went to Crimea's Royalty, King Ramon ruled that Gatrie was innocent and the noble ended up paying double the original payment as reparation to both Greil's company and Gatrie himself, though the young giant ended up with something far more important.
A new home.
The Greil Mercenaries welcomed him with open arms and soon he became well known through working with them. Of course, huge size, incredible strength and a skin thick enough to shrug off many weapons made mercenary work quite easy, many bandits decided that fleeing was a better option than facing a giant, and those stupid enough to try and fight pretty much lost immediately.
Then came the events of Daein's invasion.
When Commander Greil fell to the Black Knight, Gatrie set out on his own once more.
He didn't have anything against Ike specifically, and he certainly didn't like leaving, but he felt that his presence would only make things harder for them all. A giant was hardly good for stealth, and even with Gallia's help, Elincia's bid to save her kingdom would, likely, rely on quick, stealth strikes to begin with.
His second lone journey was easier than the first, his reputation proceeded him, and villages were more welcoming, especially when he helped out with some heavy labour on his way through.
His route brought him into Begnion and eventually into taking a temporary job guarding the Apostle's ship, wherein he met up with the Greil Mercenaries once more.
Once again, he was welcomed in and he joined them in the war, his great strength bolstering their growing forces no end, but sorrow was inevitable.
Namely his second personal loss in the form of Shinnon.
The archer had been a good friend, often teamed up with him as support while Gatrie generally squashed the enemy. They'd become close and had travelled together for a short while after Greil's death, but Shinnon had split off, looking for fame and glory by fighting in the war on Daein's side.
In the end, it was one of Begnion's loaned soldiers who'd dealt the final blow, in fact, none of them had known their old ally was fighting against them until they discovered his body amongst the fallen.
That night, Gatrie and Oscar were the only ones to see Rolf as he wept.
Eventually, the war ended, and three years later, another one erupted, plunging the whole continent into conflict and culminating in the awakening of Ashera and her attempted destruction of the sentient races.
After a lot of battles, betrayals, manipulations and revelations, the Goddess was defeated, laying the groundwork for a time of peace between the nations, as well as the laguz and beorc.
And once again, Gatrie considered searching for more of his kind.
Yune, the Goddess of Chaos, had recognised his species, and confirmed that more giants like him had existed in the time before her slumber. However, she did not know where they'd gone, all trace of them having disappeared during the Great Flood.
She'd thought they'd been wiped out, along with much of the world, but Gatrie's existence proved that wasn't so. Hope renewed, and a desire to know his origins rekindled, Gatrie considered searching for them once more.
He didn't expect them to find him first.