Notes: Filling a request from Roesart for a Demon'qu that Lissa must keep secret. I think the intent was for grumpy shenanigans but actually this turned out really dark? I just love how the time aspect of FE:A means there is like UNLIMITED AU POTENTIAL, because TIME TRAVEL and bc of Future Past presumably INFINITE DIMENSIONS OF THE SAME PEOPLE WHO MADE DIFFERENT DECISIONS LIVING SIDE-BY-SIDE. This could totally be canon except uhhhh I completely made up all the demon stuff.

Lissa finds him on the ground. The wet patches on his shirt are pitch black.

"Can I heal you?" she asks, less for permission and more because she simply isn't sure.

"Touch me," he says, "and you'll regret it."

She considers that. She is Naga's vessel, a healer, born with the touch of holy magic. It is her duty to seal any wounds she finds, to ease any suffering. But the colour of his blood and the purple mist in his eyes mark him as one of Grima's. This man has done something awful in a former life. Something even Naga hadn't found the mercy for.

It's not as if he'll die, if she walks away. That is long behind him.

"Who hurt you?" she asks.

He only stares at her. "Go. Away."

"I don't really feel like it, to be honest." She twists her staff between her fingers for a moment, then kneels beside him. The style of his coat is odd. Valmese, perhaps. And the shape of his eyelids narrow his ancestry back to Chon'sin, however long ago that was. His hair is thick and dark as whatever is seeping out of his cuts. He flinches back, and it's at once pitiable and amusing. She is not the most intimidating person.

"I'm not going to hurt you."

"I said go away."

His voice comes out raw, at once his and something darker. She wonders if he'll attack. She prays anyway.

"Don't touch me," he's saying as blue light gathers in her staff. "Don't touch me. Don't touch me."

She doesn't. Slowly, new skin unfurls from the seams of his wounds. It takes a long time. Naga is reluctant.

"You'll have to come back with me," she says. "It will take a few healings to close these completely."

"Have to?" he scoffs. "I'll heal on my own, eventually. What else am I going to do?"

"I can shorten the pain, though. You wouldn't have to wait for 'eventually.'"

"Why?" His glowing eyes narrow. Lissa only shrugs.

"You were probably handsome, once upon a time. Are you coming or not?"

She thinks the temptation to be healed faster is what gets him on his feet. Later, as she comes to know him, she suspects his odd views of honour and the repayment of debts keep him trudging after her, all the way to camp.

Chrom is the only one she tells, Chrom with the large, prominent brand and the holy sword.

"You'll look out for her as long as she's caring for you," he orders the demon, and the very timbre of his voice, passed down through generations, is enough to seal the Lon'qu's obedience like a magic spell. Lissa wishes she had such authority. Such proof of divine right.

She has her staff, though, and that's usually enough.

xXx

She keeps him carefully concealed. Neither of them wish him to leave her tent. Neither of them want the attention. It is only that night, halfway through his second healing, that Lissa thinks to ask for his name.

"It doesn't matter."

"But what else am I supposed to call you? 'Demon'?"

"Do not call me at all."

"What if I need help? You heard what my brother said."

She's teasing. He eyes her for a long moment anyway. She hates that violet haze inside them, but she does like their shape.

"Lon'qu."

"I knew you were from Chon'sin."

"Do not speak of Chon'sin in my presence." He says it fiercely and something radiates from him, something that makes her teeth grind and stomach twist. Naga's blue light shrinks back a little into the gem atop her staff.

"Why not?" she still has the gall to ask. But he doesn't answer.

xXx

When no one's around, she likes to call him for little things. Lon'qu: I dropped my handkerchief, will you pick it up? Lon'qu: I'm cold, will you bring me my cloak? Lon'qu: Will you dry the dishes as I wash them?

It's not every day a girl has a demon at her beck and call.

"I loathe you," he says on the second day, as they're folding her laundry. She wanted to see what he'd do when he got to her underthings, but he has been stubbornly avoiding them. He is avoiding anything feminine in the slightest, anything with ruffles or lace, carefully selecting only socks and leggings and shirts from the pile.

"I'm sorry. This is just the closest I can get to pranking you, without touching you." He has repeatedly asked not to be touched.

"You're such an irritating girl."

"You don't have to stay," she says. She expects him to leave right there, disappear in an evil, mysterious plume of purple smoke. He just hunts for another pair of socks to roll together.

xXx

She heals him thrice a day, brings him food although his body does not need it, talks to him before she drifts off to sleep. Maybe it's odd, she thinks, to feel so comfortable falling unconscious with an agent of Grima in her tent, but she does feel oddly guarded by his presence. If he'd wanted to hurt her, he would have done it long ago. He just wants his wounds healed. Besides, this is how she learns about him.

Potatoes are his favourite. He tasted them for the first time in Regna Ferox, when he was a ragged man in his mid-twenties, when he'd sailed across the ocean desperate for a purpose. Khan Basilio rejected him as a champion, despite him beating all the opponents easily. Said he was too full of anger, too unpredictable to be regularly set in hot-blooded matches.

"Angry about what?" Lissa asks then, and there is the same pulse of hatred she felt when she asked about Chon'sin. She lets it go.

xXx

At the end of the third day, he smiles. Just a little bit. It startles her because she didn't realize demons could still smile.

True, it was over her misfortune. She stumbled over a root as he accompanied her on a lonely walk, and had to hop a few times to keep from face-planting. But his eyes, behind their claimed colour, were something she would have called fond, had she not known better.

xXx

Keeping a demon secret in her tent wasn't always easy, of course. Frederick, practically as much of a brother as Chrom, sometimes barged in without announcing himself if he suspected a sock needed darning or she hadn't packed her belongings in a way that would save them from wrinkling. Once he'd managed it while she was actually talking to Lon'qu. The latter disappeared instantly but she was left to explain to the great knight why she'd been talking to herself and filling her room with purple smoke. Her excuse of prank planning gone awry earned his raised eyebrow, which was never a good thing.

The extra food she brought back for him drew questions too. She was able to beat most people back with the excuse that a growing girl needed all she could get, but Maribelle was especially incessant in her questioning, worried for Lissa's figure. Lon'qu himself began to grumble that she shouldn't bring anything, but she just couldn't help it. He was always alone in her tent. He couldn't join them around the fire, couldn't speak to them, couldn't form the bonds they were forming. The least she could do was bring him some kind of comfort, some memory of the life he'd had before.

Chrom asked about him a few times, but he was generally too busy to care about Lissa's going-ons, especially with the demon safely bound. He is too wrapped up in his plans with Robin, so much of his mind centered on Valm and Walhart and how to stop the onslaught. Lissa understands. She is glad his way of coping is to come up with a plan. Especially because hers is to babble to one of Grima's, lying bored in her tent, about all the memories she had with her sister. And that is useless.

xXx

On the fourth day she asks again, mid-healing: "Who hurt you?"

"An old, old enemy. He recognized my face and did not seem to realize I could not be killed. Merely delayed."

"Did you kill him?" she whispers.

"No. He must live. He must feel what I felt for as long as I can make him feel it."

Lissa senses that if she asked another personal question, he would actually answer it. She is a little too afraid to. She concentrates on the healing instead.

xXx

By the fifth day she has found a new game. They are in the forest around the camp again. It is late afternoon and dusky beneath the canopy. As they walk, Lissa swings her arms ever-so-slightly, hoping to catch his hand. Each time their pinkies brush, he jerks.

"Would you stop that!"

"It was an accident!" she sings every time.

After an hour of this, she gets her wish. He grabs her hand the next time it bumps his and squeezes so hard it hurts. Her knuckles are bunched together in his grip like the stems of a bouquet.

"Why don't you want to touch me?" she demands.

"It's that you don't want to touch me. You don't understand, Princess." His step forward pushes her back, one step, two. Her back thuds against the tree. He keeps coming, pressing her deep into the shade, against the bark with his mere presence. He lets go of her hand and it throbs. His touch had been so cold but she feels colder everywhere without it. He leans in and locks their eyes:

"I'm cursed."

"I'm aware of what side of the war you're on."

"It's more complicated than that."

"So you care? That being with you might hurt me somehow?"

He pauses, mutters a no, backs away. She finds herself disappointed on the trip back.

xXx

On one of their walks, shortly after an afternoon rainfall, they come across a butterfly who hadn't reached cover. The poor thing flops about on the ground, an easy target for birds and their own boots. Lon'qu eases it into gentle fingers, careful not to brush its useless wings, and sets it safely in the branches of a nearby bush. Lissa only watches.

It is such a mindlessly kind-hearted thing to do, care for something as lowly as a bug. She was pretty sure that demons were supposed to be evil. Fully evil. Nothing, then, is truly black-and-white.

xXx

The day comes that his wounds are finally healed. His skin is smooth, and though not the colour of any living thing, there is something appealing about it to her nonetheless. She wonders what it would be like to finally feel him, after weeks of being so careful to avoid that, as he'd asked.

There are no scars. Lissa has done a good job, but she feels a little sad about it.

"We got to be friends, didn't we?" she asks.

"I have no friends."

"I see." She scuffs the toe of her boot into the dirt, studies it. "Well, you're all better, now. I guess today is the day we part ways."

"Lissa."

She doesn't look at him. His fingers enter her vision, like he wants to cup her chin, but he doesn't touch her. Curious, she raises her face. His eyes are very serious.

"Lissa, it's better this way."

And then he's gone.

xXx

She starts to take her walks alone.

Chrom and Frederick will probably be upset, if they find out, but she doesn't really feel like asking them to come with her. They're busy. She should be busy too, but there's not much for her to do. The wounded are healed.

All of them.

It is getting dark, she realizes as she crunches on through the forest. The heady smell of it is good, but she should be turning back. That's when she hears the crack, coming from steps that aren't her own.

There's a rustle, movement—someone in the branches above her. She's shoved over hard, palms and knees jammed into the dirt. There's a weight over her with a familiar smell.

"Stay down," a voice tells her.

"You touched me," is all she can manage, incredulous, but Lon'qu is already up again, sword flashing.

She has no choice but to roll away for cover, into the brush, while he dispatches the archers who ambushed her. She's not sure who they are or what they want and feels foolish for it. She's the princess. There are a million reasons.

But Lon'qu is a demon, and he fights like one. There's nowhere for them to run, and the arrows that pepper him slow him down but can't stop him. Lissa winces anyway.

When it's over, she pushes herself up from the ground. He's standing before her, sword dripping, eyes blazing.

"Why are you here?" she asks.

He brushes his fingertips against her cheek instead of answering.

The shaking sets in all of a sudden. She'd almost died. She would have, if not for him. He came back for her. She trembles so hard she drops her staff, and the soft crash of it against the dead leaves makes her jump. She's a bundle of nerves while he's standing there like a human pincushion.

Come on, Lissa. She bends to retrieve it, all the power she has, and then looks at Lon'qu.

"Let's get you back to my tent. You know the drill."

xXx

She makes them cocoa and settles in for the night, skipping supper. This is more important. With Lon'qu frowning and complaining, she snaps all the arrow shafts and digs the heads out of his wounds. She washes them. This time she's not so careful, and her fingers brush his chest and collarbone and shoulder and back. He flinches each time, but he doesn't tell her to stop.

This time, when she tries to heal him, it comes full-force. The bleeding stops, new skin forms. They both look surprised.

"So what is the deal," she says finally. He's silent for a long while, but just as she's about to give up, he opens his mouth.

"I have not been like this for long, you know. Maybe a year or two."

"What happened?"

"It started when I was a child. I had begun my studies in the way of the sword, and was plenty good at it. I had a friend. Ke'ri. One day we went for a walk." The air around him pulses, like it always does when Lissa brings up something that infuriates him, but he keeps talking. "We were ambushed by bandits. They saw her and—I'm sure I don't have to tell you."

Lissa suspects but she doesn't know, exactly. Lissa prefers it that way. She keeps silent.

"They wanted to kill me first; get me out of the way. I'd put my sword down while we rested and was bending to grab it. The first strike might have hit me, yes, but I was prepared to dodge away; make it non-lethal. Ke'ri was so frightened for me, she didn't even think of herself. She threw herself in front of the blow, and it killed her."

"I'm sorry," says Lissa, but Lon'qu's hands are clenched and she isn't sure he even heard her.

"I killed the first of them so quickly that I knew the other two would be easy. I was but a boy, but I was well-trained and they were no match for me. But she was...Ke'ri was bleeding out on the ground, so pale. All I could think was that I'd never hear her laugh again. I would never know her kindness. She could never become a woman, a mother, could never find work she enjoyed, would not say goodbye to the parents she loved. I thought death would be too merciful."

Lissa doesn't like where this is going.

"I let them run. I honed my skills. It took a long time, but I finally tracked them down, found their homes and families. They took the person dearest to me, and so I returned the favour. I left them both living but slew their wives before them."

"And then what?" she whispers, and she must ask because she can't even imagine it.

"And then nothing. Nothing. I thought it would avenge her, would cleanse me of my guilt, but it brought me no peace. Though my quest was finished, everything began to remind me of her. I had to leave Chon'sin, I had to go as far as possible. I thought, with my skill, I would have a decent chance in Regna Ferox. I thought I could make a new life for myself there. But for all my victories, Khan Basilio never liked the look I had in my eye. I was sent away. For a time, I wandered as a mercenary. And then I began to regret. This was never what she would have wanted for me. She would have begged me to let it go. But it was too late for all of that."

"So what killed you?"

He smirks at her. "My own foolishness. I did not kill the wife of the man I first slew, because he was too dead to feel the pain of it. She caught word of me and travelled across the sea to hunt me down. Killed me in my sleep. I suppose what I'd done was too heinous for Naga to forgive, and I woke up like this. Cursed, as I told you. I can never get close to a woman. I've committed too many crimes against them."

Something cold hits Lissa's hand. Water. Surprised, she touches her face and finds she's been crying. Lon'qu looks away, fidgets.

"I'm sorry," he mutters.

"What now?" is all she can ask.

"I don't know."

They sit in silence for a long moment. Lissa doubts he feels a chill, but eventually he shrugs into his coat. It hides the flawless flesh she just made.

"You healed, this time. Easily. Like I could heal a regular man."

He nods pensively.

"And you just saved my life, you know. That has to be some points in your favour."

His smile comes back, ever so slightly.

"So you should stay," she blurts, and he's looking at her again, and she squirms beneath his gaze. "I'm good for you. There's probably more that I can heal. And if you keep keeping me safe, who knows what might happen."

"Might," he scoffs. "I've spent too many thoughts on 'might.' What might have happened if I'd been faster that day, if I'd forgiven and moved on, if I hadn't slept where I did. It is useless. We have no control over time, over the past."

"I don't know about that," says Lissa. "It's at least worth a try, isn't it?"

He doesn't answer, but only because he doesn't need to.

She sleeps on the ground with him that night. Not touching, not quite, but close enough that she can feel the warmth coming off his body. She does not remember him being warm before. It is comfortable there, with the blanket over them. His eyes are soft, vigilant on her face, and she drifts to sleep.

Notes: So Lonk's comment about "mights" there was kinda supposed to lampshade that there's also a "might" where he didn't have the strength to save Ke'ri after all, because he was a helpless kiddo, and had to live a life of gynophobia instead. And I've kind of started to fancy the idea, because I've always felt so bad for poor Lon'qu and his super sad backstory and how he blames himself for all of it. I can content myself with the thought that maybe if Lon'qu DID have the skill to save her and still didn't (because she must die in all timelines; tis the rule of tragic backstory lovers), he would have ended up in a way worse place. So as sad as it is, the Lon'qu we get is highly preferable.