ANOTHER ONE! Are you excited for the angst? Tell me you are. I love writing angst for some reason. The powerful emotions are just so much fun to portray.
Disclaimer: I don't own fire emblem or any of its characters. Sniff. Sniffff...
Sometimes, Fiora wondered why. She wondered if something was wrong with her because of her wondering, if that made any sense. For her wondering wasn't like all of the other mercenaries' wondering.
She knew what questions they'd ask the colder-than-ice gods. Why, why, oh why, did my love have to die? That was a simple one. Your love died because steel was shoved through their flesh. Steel was a hard, solid material. When a lance tip approached the chest and thumping heart of someone you loved, the steel wouldn't disappear. The steel wouldn't fade into a mist and pass harmlessly against your love's skin as a refreshing reprieve from the sweltering battle heat. It would pierce skin, bone, and muscle, like the dull knives sliced through butter at the noblemen parties. It was simple.
Another question: Why, why, oh why, must this evil happen? This one was simple as well. Humans are evil creatures. They are filled to the brim with malice and selfishness, and nothing will ever change that. Despite how strictly you were raised, despite what holy prayers you were taught, you are just as vile and contaminated as all the other filth. It isn't such a hard concept to understand that one of the more powerful humans would initiate the slaughter of his own kind to further his own ambitions. Besides, death made the world go round. Killing meant work, killing meant money, food, sustenance. Death was what kept Fiora's breaths coming out of her indigo chapped lips, and food in her shrunken stomach. She knew it as well. That's why she never cried when crimson splotches spread across the glittering ivory snow. Each drop of blood was like a drop of life that was poured into her and her country. A drop of bread or meat, a drop of income, and the blood kept her and her nation going.
What Fiora did wonder about was perhaps what seemed to be simplest of all the reasons for killing and stealing.
Survival.
Survival was what all human beings seemed to strive for. They fought tooth and nail for food to replenish their gaunt and aching bodies, they slashed and tore at flesh to preserve their own, and they even destroyed former loved ones to prolong their own suffering .
Yet all the while, in their sunken in eyes that seemed to have faded to a listless gray, a single emotion remained. Weariness filled their listless faces and their shuddering breaths. They were weary and tired. Tired of what they'd done, tired of what they'd have to do, and tired of living in such a cruel world where nothing but strength and numbers mattered.
That was what confused Fiora so much. If you hated it all, hated every gritty texture that grated against your skin, hated every shrieking sound that tore at your ears, and hated every sharp bite of pain when you moved your tired limbs, why stay? Why subject yourself to the continuing torture of breathing.
She knew the many believed that after the life faded from your physical body, your suddenly golden spirit would soar into the clouds and join the merciless gods while they congratulated you on a job well done. Beautiful fantasy though it was, Fiora found it more trying than satisfying. Why, would she once again want to be subjected to the atrocities of mankind as a spirit in a golden palace, when she had suffered the atrocities of mankind as a human in an icy, straw hut? Would the glistening and glittering surfaces make the horrors prettier, and easier to stomach? The same way death borne off of white wings and glinting silver made death a little easier to accept?
No. No, she'd rather fade. Fade wasn't the right word for it, for fading implied a slow reluctant exit. Fiora wanted an exit, for her being to gently dissipate into nothingness; for nothing, real or unreal, to be associated with her, or her life. To not exist and be nothing. To not be thought of, mourned, or remembered, and to not think, mourn, or remember. To be a blissful nothing, rather than exist in blissful nothingness.
But this was a silly wish she knew. She let a sigh out, the armor on her chest pressing down as a cold heavy weight on her slowly thumping heart. She'd head to the stables soon when daylight broke. There she would meet her employers, and receive her instructions. Her first solo mission as a fourteen year-old, how incredible and skilled she was.
"Fiowa?"
She turned, her short white skirt fluttering on the frosty breeze to face the small voice. Her tired blue eyes lit up with a forced light as she bent down.
"Hello, Florina."
The little girl stumbled forward on her stubby, child legs. Her ratty burlap dress had made fiery red chafes on her milky white skin, and her wide blue eyes gazed up worriedly at her older sister through wild lavender locks of hair.
"Awe you gowing away?"
Away… The word darkened Fiora's calm eyes for an instant, but she shook it off with the reassuring smile she remembered from her dead mother.
"Yes, Florina."
She set her lance down beside her on the snowy ground where she'd been stargazing and reached out. The small girl immediately leapt into the lean, muscled arms and locked her own tiny limbs around the older girl's slender neck as she was lifted into the air.
"I don want you to gow again," she mumbled into the chilled skin on Fiora's collarbone. "Fawina was wowied when you came back wate wast time.
Fiora held back a sigh, knowing that this would startle her little sister, and made sure her voice was even when she spoke.
"You'll both be fine, Florina. I'll come back with lots of money just like last time."
The words seemed to hang in the air and whisper liar, liar, back at her. She probably wouldn't come back. This mission was dangerous, suicidal. It was why she was the only volunteer. But she had to come back. She couldn't not come back.
Fiora pressed her cold lips against the warm skin on Florina's slumbering cheek and turned to head back to the hut to tuck the tiny girl in.
The twig door swung open with a scratch against the hard-packed dirt floor. She looked around the small one room hut and her eyes fell upon the discarded, and dirty blanket. She laid Florina on top of it, wrapping as much of the thin cloth around her in a tight cocoon as possible.
Fiora straightened up, searching for the dark blue hair and pale skin of Farina. The small ten-year old was snuggled in a ratty blanket identical to Florina's. Her choppy bangs fell haphazardly across her scrunched face. Fiora shook her head before giving her sister a light kiss on the forehead and heading for the door. She pretended not to notice that the sleeping, soft breaths had been fake, and that the dirt smeared cheeks had clean tracks down them.
Stepping outside the little hut into the snow again chilled her bare legs and she picked her lance up from where she had left it. Fiora grasped the frigid metal in her numb hands and began to take crunching steps across the white plane of oblivion.
Her blissful nothingness would have to wait, for now she was flesh. She was flesh and bone and she needed to support her family.
The thought stopped her, and she felt a bitter smile fold on her face as silent tears streamed down her cheeks. That's why they stayed. That's why they all stayed.
And then she began to walk again, wiping away the frozen water on her face.