Happy Birthday, Inigo!
[Alternate Parents AU]
Written for Inigo's Birthday.
Inigo buys the tickets the moment he sees the posters around Ylisstol. The Plegia-Ylisse war had ended years before he had expected and by the time he made it across the sea, the capitol was in full swing celebrating Chrom's ascension to the throne and his new marriage.
The theatre is small, dim, and packed. He finds a standing table and flashes a few grins to the waitresses. They look unimpressed as they hand out drinks, but tonight, Inigo cannot care less. He only has one woman on his mind tonight and she is far more important.
As she comes out on to the stage, he forgets to breathe. Olivia is younger than he had ever seen her before and while he knew this would be the case, it does not stop him from staring as if she would vanish into nothingness at a blink of his eye. Surrounded by the gauzy white of her dancer uniform, she is ethereal, exquisite, ephemeral.
She bows deeply and Inigo is close enough to the stage to see how pink her cheeks are, hidden behind her hair. The crowd bursts into cheers around him and his voice joins them. Then a hush descends as she straightens her back. Something snaps into clarity in her face, an expression of concentration so familiar Inigo shivers. Olivia places her foot forward, outstretches her arm, and arcs back.
Olivia stands there, suspended in the silence and the heat of the stage lights. The pause is too long, Inigo notes in the back of his head. He can see the faintest crease of worry on Olivia's face, but no one else notices.
The fiddle whines into life all of a sudden and she slides into routine as if nothing had gone wrong. The cheers begin as her arms spin in mesmerizing patterns over her head, her golden ornaments jangling. Her feet hit the floor in time with the drum beat and Inigo can feel his body yearning to fold himself in the rhythm of the music and to move. When she spins and kicks herself airborne, her entire body a lithe, sinuous arc floating in a moment, the entire theatre goes wild. Inigo stretches out on the tips of his toes.
Olivia skips, swings, and stomps hard, so the old planks on the floor creak. The music crescendos with her leaps and she weaves in and out of the notes, harmonizing sound with her movements. Her dance brings his warrior heart new blood, makes his dancer mouth dry with passion, and Inigo wants nothing more than to dance by her side again.
When she finishes with a leap and a split, the crowd went into an uproar, cheering and clapping. They hit their tankards against the tables so hard that even the jaded waitresses look impressed. She bows again and flowers rain down on the stage.
"Tips for the lovely Olivia. Wasn't she wonderful? Come on, show your appreciation with some coin!"
Inigo looks over and sees the collectors with their hats starting to fan throughout the crowd. He even recognizes a few of them, Shepards, from his hazy memory of his childhood. Reaching into his pocket, he tries to find some coin, only to remember the lady thief that robbed him blind two days ago.
Someone places a coin in front of Inigo on the table. "You can give this to her."
"Thanks. Wait-!" Inigo looks up and sees Lucina without her mask standing across the table from him. Luckily the theatre is still loud and no one notices Inigo's outburst.
"I thought you would come here." In the dim lights of the theatre, she looks as grim as she did a year ago when he had last seen her.
"Lu- Marth! Where is your mask?" he hisses, making sure to lower his voice.
"It broke. Besides, the room is dark. If you're so worried, you should have worn one too." Inigo tugs his bangs over his branded eye with old embarrassment. Still, the stage lights threw the rest of the theatre into comparative shadow and Lucina's eyes appeared almost coal black.
Inigo casts a glance to the stage, but Olivia does not seem like she will return for the encore. "Let's go somewhere else to talk." he says and tosses the coin she gave him into the nearest hat.
"Thank you, young man- wait, Marth?"
Lucina grabs Inigo's wrist and they bolt, pushing their way through the crowd and knocking over a lot of tankards and tables. The woman in the bulky coat calls after them, but she does not try to pursue them.
"Lucina, slow down, they're not following us-" he says as they run two blocks east and three north, close to the outer wall of town.
She finally does stop in an abandoned alleyway. While she catches her breath, Inigo grabs her and wraps her into a hug.
"I'm glad you're alright." he mutters into her hair, the same shade as his and Father's, and she hugs him back. Her arms are filled with the familiar relief they had felt each time they had reunited after a mission.
"Older sisters have to take care of younger brothers." she says and Inigo recognizes it as one of Mother's sayings.
"And younger brothers have to take care of older sisters." Inigo finishes. They part and Inigo smiles broadly.
He had worried he would never see any of his friends ever again. The world was so vast and he had been so lost for the first couple months, filled with a mission to see his parents and stop Grima, but with nothing to direct him towards that goal. And after struggling without coin and being rejected from village maiden to village maiden, he had made it and found his beloved sister in the flesh.
Then his heart plummets when he remembers what had drawn him to the theatre that night, what must have drawn Lucina to see their mother now of all times.
As Inigo stares at the Brand of the Exalt in her eye and she stares at his, they can see the same question running through their minds. Lucina is frowning as usual and Inigo's grin has begun to suffer wears and tears.
"It seems we've really succeeded in changing the future already. We did so well that our father and mother never got married and we'll never exist. Erasing someone's existence should be enough to stop Grima, right?" Inigo says.
He does not know where the joke comes from. It is in terrible taste and normally this would be when the girl walked off or slapped him, but Lucina instead cracks a small smile.
"The war was over so much faster. They didn't have time to get to know each other…" Lucina explains, but to herself or Inigo, neither of them is sure.
Inigo laughs and even to his own ears, it sounds vaguely maniacal.
"…alright, now that we're both here, the only thing to do is seduce Father's current wife and you can attack when Father and Mother are together. That way they'll realize their chemistry, get married, have us, and everything will be fixed."
Lucina almost has a heart attack until she realizes Inigo is smiling that tired, old smile. She shakes her head sadly.
"There's nothing to be done. We have to be grateful we didn't start vanishing once the timeline changed this much. And I'm sure there can be someone else Mother can find happiness with."
They are lying to each other and hiding behind smiles to soothe their feelings. It is an old, bad habit, but Inigo is nothing if not well practiced by now. He puts his arm around her shoulder and they stand in each other's company.
"She was lovely tonight. Do you remember when we used to dance around the old ballrooms on her feet? Father was so bad that Mother had to lead." Lucina reminisces because they are the only ones who will have these memories and stories now. If she does not speak them now, her chest will burst.
Inigo nods as he remembers how brightly Mother shone then and now whenever she performed. Not matter how embarrassed she was before or after, Olivia unleashed on a stage brought cheer to their grim childhood days and sparked in Inigo the fierce desire to follow her. Even if it meant dancing in front of her grave while Lucina brought fresh flowers and pretended not to watch.
"Lucina, will may I have this dance?" Inigo says out of the blue. The memory of her performance keeps inflaming his imagination. All he wants to do is dance until his body empties itself of anything except for rhythm and movement and light. He turns to face her, bows as is custom, and offers her his hand.
Lucina understands and takes his outstretched hand. They settle into the old position Olivia had taught them long ago. But she is stiff until Inigo pulls and pushes at the frame of her arms to loosen her up.
"I don't remember all the steps." Lucina confesses.
"Just remember the feeling and follow me." Inigo says.
And then they are off, dancing a quickstep down a narrow alley.
Inigo counts out loud because he has not had a partner in a long time and Lucina takes a few hesitant steps before the flow of the dance solidifies between them. Their feet find their pattern and begin to lift off the earth. They whirl and skip, Lucina's hair flying, and Inigo's feet kicking in time with his breathless "and a one, two-"
Lucina lets out an unrestrained laugh, the first in months, as Inigo dips her forward and slings her back. His heart lightens each time their feet flutter above the cobblestones, as if they were fairies among flowers. Inigo smiles wide for an unseen crowd. They reach the end of the alleyway in moments and he pulls up in a flurry of little kicks to round the corner. Lucina does not know this part and almost trips but he slows down just enough to steady her back into the beat. Her steps fall back in line with his and Lucina's lips curl into the smile Inigo always tried to tease out.
They take off again, swinging through the moonlit streets of Ylisstol. Everything is silent aside from the sound of Inigo's counting, the shuffling of their feet, and Lucina's laugh, the same timbre as their mother's. Inigo skips a certain way that reminds Lucina of Olivia's light feet and Lucina's hand grips Inigo's the same way she first held Falchion, with Chrom's hands enclosing hers. They cross and bound through empty streets, holding on to each other, dancing as if the night will never end.
In those dark streets, Inigo becomes nothing but exhilarated movement, needing nothing but his and Lucina's feet flitting upon the air, a memory of a fiddle, and their parents' laughter in that faraway ballroom so many years ago.