The Right-Hand Path

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

WARNING: this contains implications (not on-screen depictions) of some pretty graphic violence and other grim stuff. And sad things related to small children.

Also contains Seliph and Lana as a married couple.

Freege, 778

The scream of a dying pegasus cut through the tumult of battle and Seliph realized that Larcei had taken down the last of the falcoknights that savaged his party. The heightened senses granted him by the Tyrfing gave Seliph a strange picture of the fight swirling around him, allowing some individual clashes between the Crusaders and the Weiss Ritter to stand out from the general fog of of the battle. He could somehow see Ares clear across the field as the Black Knight charged at the leader of the Weiss Ritter; he could see Ishtar, too, for a moment, her figure illuminated by the unearthly glow of the Mjolnir. She was about to strike, and Seliph felt a shout of futile warning rise in his throat, but Ares and his black destrier had already closed the distance and the Goddess of Thunder crumpled beneath the power of the Mystletainn.

Seliph heard a cry off to his right- not a shriek of physical pain, but the kind of anguish that came from watching someone else fall. Tinny, he thought. For Tinny's sake, he had to keep Ares from finishing Ishtar off...

"Hold, Ares!"

It might have been a stupid thing, to rush across the field to save someone who'd been such a menace to them all, but Seliph could tell the battle was winding down, that none of the remaining Weiss Ritter posed anything close to the threat of Ishtar or those deranged falcoknight sisters, and he had to make the attempt...

Didn't he?

-x-

Never had Seliph been glad for so many gifted healers in his party. He'd let Tinny tend to her gravely injured cousin, but Tinny had been so distraught that Seliph decided he'd better send Ced to assist her- an easy decision, but maybe not the right one. Not with so many of the Crusaders in a state where they'd been carried from the field. Seliph didn't know the full extent of the casualties, but he had no talent for healing and knew to stay out of everyone's way until the worst was over. So instead he went to survey the scarred and bloodied turf they'd won that day, another stepping stone leading them towards Behalla. Seliph thought that from the highest point of the field, he could just make out the spires of the imperial palace against the horizon. He considered praying then, to the god Baldur or maybe just to the souls of his parents, but Seliph wasn't sure in that moment what he was praying for. It wouldn't do him any good to pray for Julius to simply come to his senses and stop, Seliph was certain of that. Even if Julius truly did love Ishtar, which Seliph had to question...

"Lord Seliph?"

Seliph spun around to face the soft-spoken Silessian prince. Ced looked uncommonly rattled and Seliph could see the crusted blood beneath his normally immaculate nails.

"Forgive me, Lord Seliph. Princess Ishtar survived only a short time. Her injuries were too devastating."

"The Mystletainn is good at doing what it does," Seliph replied, transferring his regrets to the sword and its reputed thirst for blood. He wondered then how Ishtar might have fared against the Tyrfing, weighing the possibility she might have survived his attack against the harm she would have done to the other Crusaders before he got there.

Ced wasn't done with the unhappy report, though.

"While we were treating her, we realized that the princess was expecting a child, and we made an attempt to save the twins that she carried."

Seliph then felt the prickles down his scalp that came with the reception of particularly horrible news. Unexpected horrible news. He could focus only on a single word of what Ced told him, so that its context was lost.

"Twins? Where are they... are they okay?"

"No, Lord Seliph. They were far too small to live. They never drew breath."

"Were they my brother's?"

Ced stared at him for a moment before answering.

"There's no way of knowing. I didn't see any holy marks on them, if that's what you mean. But the brand can develop at any time in a carrier's life, so that really says nothing."

They were his brother's. Of course they were... whose else would they be?

-x-

Seliph walked with leaden steps to the tent where they'd placed Ishtar after her death. The late Goddess of Thunder lay covered, with only her face and one arm exposed; vivid stains on the white sheet draping her hinted at the mangled state of her body. Tinny sat at Ishtar's head, stroking her cousin's hair and crying. This registered with Seliph, but then he noticed what lay alongside Ishtar- two bundles entirely swathed in white wrapping. Seliph judged them to each be about the size of his fist.

His own niece and nephew... maybe.

He'd assumed they were a boy and a girl, like Larcei and Ulster... or like his own siblings. But he hadn't asked and Ced hadn't told him, and he realized now they might've been two boys or two little girls. His other unspoken assumption might also had been wrong, but Seliph didn't feel so. In all likelihood, one of the small bundles would've been the major carrier of the Tordo line... and the other, the heir of Loptyr.

"You don't want to look, Sir Seliph. They're not... they weren't ready," he heard Tinny say, and Seliph realized he'd unconsciously been reaching for the bundle on the right. He withdrew his hand and turned to face Tinny.

"I'm sorry," he said, and he hoped she heard the genuine regret in those two words.

"No, I think I understand now. I know why Ishtar told me she couldn't take another path."

As small as Tinny was, as pathetic as she seemed now with her reddened eyes and grief-stricken pose, Seliph heard something calm and even remote in her voice. Maybe it was shock.

"Even if she put aside everything and joined us, none of this would end if she turned out to be carrying the next Dark Lord. It would go on for another generation and maybe forever, and we'd never stop being in fear. So she went down the only path left to her- to fight us and win, and go back to Belhalla and give Prince Julius his heir... or to die, and let that threat... die... with her."

Tinny couldn't quite get those last words out. She crumbled then, dropping back into a puddle of tears, and Seliph placed his hand on her shoulder in a completely inadequate gesture of comfort. Watching Tinny weep only made him feel sick, and so Seliph looked past her, down at Ishtar's body. Words like "waxen" and "ashen" didn't really measure up to the terrible pallor of her face. Seliph tried to reconcile everything he'd heard of her now- the kind princess who'd protected innocent children, the loving cousin who'd brightened Tinny's dismal existence in Alster. The enemy who'd made a game of their very survival at Miletos. The daughter who was bound to avenge the deaths of her parents and brother. The mother of his own brother's children.

"I wish things could've gone some other way," he said.

Tinny answered him with a soft little sob.

-x-

Arthur was hovering outside the tent as Seliph left it.

"Please do what you can for Tinny," Seliph said to him.

"Of course, sir."

Arthur's eyes were dry; he'd never known Ishtar, never loved her as Tinny loved their cousin, and so Seliph didn't offer him condolences. But he'd do better at comforting Tinny than Seliph could, and Seliph left the last two members of the Freege dynasty to themselves. He walked then to the main tent they'd set up as a healing pavilion. His cousin Leif was standing by the entrance, taking a breather; Leif had streaks and splotches of blood all down his shirt, and Seliph knew little if any of that blood was Leif's own.

"The Goddess of Thunder and her friends did a number on us," said Leif as Seliph approached. "No one's died, but there are some who'll need to sit out the next campaign... and some others who ought to sit it out."

Seliph nodded; a lump had formed in his throat almost as soon as he'd turned away from Arthur, and right now he didn't trust himself to speak.

"Make whatever rules you need to- base it off who has which holy blood and in what amount, if that'll work," Leif said. "Maybe Lewyn has some ideas on it; I don't know. What I do know is that if you don't lay down some rules before the next sortie, there are people who are going die trying their best when their best can't possibly be good enough. Not anymore."

Leif's words helped Seliph to focus again; that was where his duty lay, after all. He had an army full of people who were ready to lay down their lives for him, in his name and for his birthright, and he couldn't lose sight of that.

"I hear you, Leif," Seliph said. "We'll take care of it. I'll talk to Lewyn."

He wasn't really fobbing the dilemma off on his tactician. Seliph was going to take care of things just as he'd promised Leif... as soon as he'd talked to her.

Seliph still had an image of her as she'd been through their childhood, of two brown eyes peeping out from beneath a puff of carrot-colored hair. Since their departure from Isaach, though, she'd changed in subtle ways. Seliph saw her now, a sylph in white robes, her small figure straight and proud. The long ringlets falling past her shoulders looked like polished copper in the torchlight.

"Lana..."

She turned, a finger to her lips, and Seliph kept his footsteps as quiet as he could manage as he walked to her. The patient sleeping before them was Lana's own brother.

"Lester's all right?"

"He is now," she said, and Seliph could tell from the flinty edge to her voice that it had been a close thing. "I told him not to charge those crazy women on the pegasi..."

They watched Lester sleep for a few moments; with his hair all tumbled out of its usual careful arrangement, Lester looked terribly young, even younger than Lana. But his face was pink and healthy and even the stillness of a magical sleep wasn't still at all compared to death.

"Ced told me about Ishtar and her babies," Lana said without warning, and her soft words made Seliph wince.

"I wish he hadn't."

"I made him tell me, because he looked sick over it and it's not like Ced to be affected that badly by anything."

"I don't even want to think about what Ced had to deal with today," Seliph said, hoping Lana wouldn't say anything more about it. "Don't you think about it either."

But she was, Seliph knew, because instead of holding her hands behind her back as she usually did, Lana had her hands folded at her belly, like that simple gesture could keep some terrible fortune away.

"Seliph..."

"I don't want you fighting anymore," he said, as firmly as he could without waking Lester or any of the other sleeping patients. "Go back to Freege and take care of yourself."

"I am taking care of myself," she retorted. "Larcei's further along than I am and you had her out there taking on those falcoknights today."

"Larcei, well... it's not like anyone can really hold her back... and we needed her..."

"Well, you should have seen me on the ramparts of Mease defending the castle against that Three-Headed Dragon attack. If you had seen me then, I don't think you'd be trying to coddle me now."

Even when she was angry- and right now she was- there was something adorable about her, Seliph thought. Those big brown eyes weren't made to shoot fire.

"I don't want to coddle you, Lana." Though he kind of did, to be honest. "I can't risk you either... I just can't put you in harm's way."

She reached up to place her fingers at his lips, hushing him.

"If you fall at Belhalla do you really think there's any safe place for us?" She asked it so sweetly, so sadly, that Seliph had to look away from her. "This is a far more terrible world than the one your father left. I can't just scoot back up to Tilnanogue and hide with Mother and wait for twenty years until our child is old enough to fight the next holy war."

"But, Lana..."

"Not with the Dark Lord among us walking the earth, I can't! And a victory over you would be all the proof anyone needs of the Dark Lord's power. There would be no mercy for pack of failed Crusaders- no mercy and nowhere to run."

Seliph closed his eyes. He could feel her little fingers, warm and soft upon his cheek.

"Seliph, you heard what Leif said about these... these warlords of your brother's, the ones he makes from the bodies of the fallen. If you lost to him, what would we do if a warlord showed up with your face, in your form, with the Tyrfing in his hand? Where could we possibly be safe if that came to pass?" She nestled against him now, her head on his shoulder, the curve of her belly brushing against his thigh. "I'll be with you. At your side, and at your back, and I'll throw myself between you and Julius if it comes to that."

"Lana..."

"And if anything happens to me, well..." And her voice caught and wavered just like the flickering torch. "Tinny's a nice girl. I think she even likes you, more than a little."

-x-

They disposed of the dead- all from the Weiss Ritter, thankfully- at dawn the following morning. Most of them were tumbled into a mass grave there at the battlefield; Lewyn identified the three falcoknight sisters as distant relations of the Silessian royal house, but neither he nor Ced had any desire to send the bodies "home" to Silesse. Only Princess Ishtar would escape the mass grave, as she was to be escorted home to Freege to rest alongside the remains of her mother Hilda.

Seliph watched as Ishtar's hastily-assembled coffin was loaded onto a wagon. The idea of sending the Goddess of Thunder home with some degree of honor wasn't just for show; it also got several of the more vulnerable members of Seliph's party away from Behalla and hopefully far from Julius and his warlords. Seliph thought this a good way of keeping his promise to Leif, but there was something in this arrangement that did trouble him.

"Shouldn't we burn her?" he whispered to Lewyn. "I mean, Julius is desecrating corpses to create his dark warlords."

For the first time in his life, Seliph felt quite glad that his father Sigurd had been reduced to a whirlwind of ash, dust from which no dark warrior might ever be fashioned. But Lewyn shook his head at that suggestion.

"It doesn't quite work that way, Seliph. If it did, Jugdral would be overrun with perversions of the Crusaders and all their descendants."

It made Seliph feel a little better. Just a little. But even that was not very much...

He turned from Lewyn then, seeking Tinny; she was on the other side of the wagon in the full mourning dress of a noble of Grannvale. Arthur, hovering at her shoulder, was in his ordinary clothes. Arthur stepped back with a deferential nod as Seliph approached. For a moment, they all simply watched as the wagon and its sad load were readied for departure. Seliph took Tinny's hand in his own- not because he was seeing her now as a potential bride, or even because Lana might want him to, but because she was the kind of girl who felt better when she had something to hold. Arthur had her other hand for that very reason.

"Where are they?" Seliph whispered to Tinny, when he couldn't bear not knowing any longer.

"They're with her," Tinny assured him, her voice small but clear. "We put them in her arms before we sewed up the shroud."

"Good."

Seliph supposed they done the best that they could. Hadn't they? As the wagon creaked into motion, leaving ruts in the red clay, Seliph wasn't entirely sure.

The End

A/N: I sat on this for a long time, believing it to be a little too weird for publication even if I liked the themes and concepts. But FE13 has brought about a whole new supply of childbirth-related 'fic and art so, eh. Here it is.

Leif's characterization here is drawn from his lover's conversation with Janne, in which he states people without holy blood shouldn't be fighting at this point in the war. I left it open-ended as to whether some of the Gen2 kids were actually sub-kids, including Janne.