Thanks-giving
Fire Emblem fan fiction

Genre: gen, friendship, angst
Rating: G (K)
Characters: Matthew, Eliwood
Word Count: around 600
Summary: Matthew and Eliwood share some words after leaving behind the Dread Isle. The island's ghosts fill their silences. FE7, post chapter 19.
Notes: Unrelated to the American Thanksgiving holiday, though I would like to say, the timing is very strange indeed. O_o

The dawn was different when at sea. The sliver of sun dipped under the horizon and back out of it as the ship plunged and flew with the waves.
Is it dawn yet? They asked. Has the morning come? The day made new again?

As sure as Eliwood saw the sunlight, he couldn't answer the ocean's questions. Nothing seemed real yet. The salt-rough railing under his fingertips was hard and strong and solid, yet Eliwood couldn't make himself believe that it was truly there. That it was truly there and other things were not.

"My lord enjoys the sunrise," said a voice behind him. "Perhaps his enjoyment would be greater if he didn't so resemble an icicle." Eliwood felt a sudden weight on his shoulders, accompanied by a strange smell, itchy somehow. His gaze fluttered from the horizon to his side, where Matthew was gazing intently at him.

"Thank you, Matthew" he murmured, and turned back to the sea. Its questions were the same. Eliwood's answers were just as inadequate as they had been before. Together, they looked out to the sea with a waiting silence.

Is the morning come yet?

Finally, Matthew let out a bemused heh. "This is the oddest thing!" he declared. "I can't think of anything to say to my lord."

Eliwood slowly coaxed his gaze back from the sea again and turned to Matthew. "Is that so odd?" He watched the slow roll of waves in Matthew, rocking as the ship rocked, bobbing like lost cargo.

"Seeing as I came up with every intention of speaking to you, yes, I'd classify it as such. You are Lord Hector's dearest friend; I refuse to believe it was out of place to approach you."

Eliwood edged back to the fringes of reality. "Oh, no. Not at all. We are—we are in this together, are we not? Silly things like lordships and hierarchy and—" He stopped. He had said nothing that was not wildly self-evident long before, nothing Matthew didn't already know.

Matthew, after waiting to see if Eliwood would continue, said, "Yes, we are all 'in this together', aren't we." It sounded like an afterthought to an opinion that hadn't been voiced. "Even those who've gone, do you think?"

It took Eliwood a moment to puzzle out what Matthew meant, which shamed him, but their trek through the forests, new to the scent of death that permeated the Dread Isle, seemed very long ago, indeed. For then Eliwood still entertained a small hope—hope that now seemed quite foolish, as the run was definitely rising and the railing was definitely real, and so to was everything else. "Yes, even they," he said.

Matthew pressed his lips together and made a sound, halfway between musing and approval. "Strange, then, how one can manage to still feel so alone."

Briefly Eliwood wondered whether he'd said the wrong thing.

"Stranger still how one does not—in most moments." Matthew tortured his face to smiling, which Eliwood knew was for himself, and not for Eliwood. "She is gone. There is nothing to do but accept this. I needed to know if this held true for you. You and the…late Marquess."

Eliwood said nothing at first. There was a slight prickling at his neck as a beam of sunlight glanced over it, before becoming once again enveloped by clouds. The sun had risen, as it always had. It was their responsibility, together, to keep it so—and for once, this had nothing at all to do with lords and dragons, wizards, and old dead secrets, and everything to do with small words and minor tokens of understanding. "Mm."

"Thank you. The day is new, my lord. Let us inform the rest of us."

end.