A/N: Okay. Okay. Bear with me here - Feather was stupid and jumped on the Fire Emblem bandwagon and wrote this without watching Chapter Ten of Awakening (I'm just watching a playthrough on YouTube because I'm far too broke - er, financially disorganized, hehe - to actually BUY a 3DS and the game). So at the end of Nine, when Basilio tells Robin to not let Chrom do anything stupid, I just assumed (bad, bad Feather) that Robin, like, knocked Chrom out or something. With his magic. Whatever.

In short - pretend the beginning of Chapter Ten didn't happen. I'm sorry to force you to pretend. Or, if you just happened to not go to kindergarten and don't like pretending, just say that Chrom's party has a lot of camps/forts scattered near the borders of the three countries.

Also, this game is too sad like what.

Please review!

The party troops back to their camp outside of Regna Ferox in a sense of numb grief. Lissa looks at the few upturned faces around her to give her something to do. Basilio, grim-faced and thunder-browed, lugs Chrom over his shoulder like a large, armored sack of potatoes. The newcomer, Libra, appears heartbroken. Maribelle walks with her head held high, not even seeming to care about the eye makeup smearing with her streaming tears. Both Sumia and Cordelia are white-faced and shaken, the former biting her lip to keep herself from crying, the latter gripping her spear shaft as if it will ground her. Frederick looks on and marches, as clean-cut as ever, but his eyes are dark and horribly empty.

It is silent, and it makes Lissa want to scream. Scream for her sister, scream for the gods' injustice, scream for her own shattered heart and soul, but—

But.

Emmeryn wouldn't have wanted me to cry for her, Lissa reminds herself.

So she doesn't. Lissa likes when everything fits where it should—a habit she probably picked up from Maribelle, along the way—but this kind of exactness seems imperfect. She thinks of her shattered heart, and imagines glass—stained red, like the colored glass in the chapel in Ylissetol—jagged shards, grating against each other.

Emmeryn had always been patient with her, especially when she was younger. When Lissa was five, she had bumped into a table showing off her curtsies to her sister, and knocked over a clay jar. It was nothing of use, just for show, but it was crafted finely, painted with all the precision that would have made five-year-old Lissa groan in frustration. In any case, the jar toppled and broke.

Her handmaidens all gave her disapproving looks and prim little shakes of their heads, but the Exalt just smiled knowingly. And at Lissa's panicked, tearful apologies, Emmeryn laughed gently, and got out of her fancy chair.

"Don't cry," her sister had told her soothingly, taking her hands and squeezing them; "See, here"—gesturing to the vase—"it's only in three pieces. The potter can fix it."

And three weeks later, the vase was back on the side table, looking pristine as ever. Emmeryn had smiled again, serene and calming. "All broken things can be fixed," she told Lissa kindly. "They just need a little glue."

Lissa curls her hand over her (broken, broken) heart, and wonders just how much glue she'll need.