Author's Note: A Secret Santa present for Avi, my dearest Brady. I feel weird writing your muse but I wanted to get two of your favoured pairings in there somehow. I hope it's okay!

"Ma?"

The voice behind her made Maribelle flinch and hurry to wipe her face on her sleeve, despite how undignified such an action was.

"It's Mother," she insisted.

"Ma, what're you doing all the way out here?"

She'd run to the stream a good length away from camp after her fight with Vaike, hoping to take a soak and clean all the anger and self-loathing from her skin—it was beneath her to let a man like him make her feel that way!—but once she was there, she found that she couldn't remove a single article of clothing or take down a single lock of her hair. It all seemed like too much effort. All she had the strength to do was sit on the rocky bank and hug her knees to her chest, even though that slumped her shoulders and turned her toes inward.

"Return to camp, Brady!" she ordered. "I am about to bathe!"

"Bull shit," he said good-naturedly. "You're just starin' at the water!"

She turned automatically to give him her best glare, realizing too late that her cheeks were still wet. The grin slipped from his face while she scrubbed at hers.

"Ma?! What's the matter?"

"Nothing! As you can see, I have already begun washing my face! The salt in my tears helps exfoliate!"

"Bullshit!" he said again, and then she was on her feet, fists clenched hard.

"Do not speak to me that way! Return to camp immediately!"

"And leave you out here like—" He faltered, one hand awkwardly held out to her. "Like this?"

"Precisely."

"You know I can't do that. What happened? Do I need to kick somebody's—"

"Brady, I will not allow you to lay a hand upon your father. You have tiny bones and he would crush you."

"Would not!" he protested before he seemed to realize what she meant. "Wait, what? Dad?"

"This is none of your concern! I am of no mind to talk about your ignorant, tactless, rude, low-born, ungrateful gorilla of a father."

"Tell me how ya really feel."

Maribelle sat on the bank again and began pulling ribbons out of her hair with prim determination. Brady did not take the hint, sitting down at her right instead. She quit trying to prepare for her bath and he twisted his staff between his big hands—puppy-like, really, the funny young man—while a silence settled between them.

"I will beat him up if I have to," he said finally. "I've never seen you cry before. Not ever. I heard you behind your bedroom door, after he died, but you never let me see. I don't know what he did to start yer waterworks now, but I'm betting it was bad."

No, she tried to say, of course not, everything is perfectly fine. Her mouth opened but only doubt poured out, dark and silent. For a long while she could only sit there, lips parted, and watch him keep twisting his staff. She used to do the same thing as a girl, when she was nervous. Had she never stomped that out of him? That useless twirling that set absolutely nothing in motion?

"You don't think I'm useless, do you, Brady?" she finally whispered. His hands stopped moving.

"What? Course you're not useless. You're the best healer we have. Why would you ask me a thing like that?"

"Vaike said I was useless. That last battle…" She straightened a little and folded her hands neatly in her lap. "I suppose I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Chrom had been hurt, on the front lines, so I galloped off to heal him. Just as he was getting to his feet, an arrow whizzed right by my head. Another inch and it might have killed me. Vaike leapt to my defence and slew the archer, but afterward…he was so cruel, Brady. He said I should never ride up so far, that I was a weak and defenseless and useless excuse for a woman, that I must remain in the rear, where I can be protected. You can imagine I did not take that lying down! I am ashamed to say that I shouted myself raw, but he insisted over and over that I was pathetic and needed to stand down. That bean-brained brute! Finally I could not take it any longer. I came out here to assure myself that he was wrong, but…I can not seem to."

"Ma," said Brady, gently, awkwardly, "Don't let that get to ya."

"He has never spoken to me in such a manner. I know he can be crude and over-competitive and thick, but he isn't a mean person. I've no idea what came over him. I really must have done something quite foolish."

Brady leaned back on his hands and gave a strange sigh. "Can't believe I'm about to start comparin' relationships with my own ma, 'cuz that's weird as hell—"

"Brady!"

"But," he continued, "here goes: don't feel bad. I understand, okay?"

"Has he said as much to you?" she demanded, sadness suddenly slipping away to be replaced with ferocious, righteous indignation. "Tell me it isn't so! I shall give him the soundest thrashing with my parasol that—"

"Ma, no, not him! I get that crap from Owain. All the time, especially if I got hurt or was almost hurt. And I bet I get it in a lot more words than Dad gave ya! It's just how he handles things when he's worried. He can be really mean, when he is—all of us can; him and Inigo and me. Don't even get me started on Gerome. Even Kjelle snaps. We say all kinds of awful things to each other. But we don't mean it. We just get so scared."

His voice trembled, and she'd thrown her arms around him even before the first tears started coursing down his cheeks, but he kept on as though he wasn't crying, turning his face away:

"He says he wouldn't know what he'd do with his life, if anything happened to me. So if I take an arrow like you almost did, all he knows how to do is yell at me and call me weak, because he's the warrior and I'm the healer with no skills whatsoever, in case maybe I'll get it through my thick head, and stop risking my neck, and stay where it's safe—where he thinks I belong. But I know none of it's true. I've gotta keep fighting just like the rest of you, and I've gotta ignore what he says when he's scared for me, because he doesn't mean to hurt me. Sounds like Dad's doing the same thing to you. I didn't know him much as a kid, but I can see from here that he's crazy about you. You're probably the only thing that really matters to him. So of course he's gonna yell at you if you scare him like that."

She held him a little tighter and started running her fingers through his hair while she processed all that, grateful for his advice and a little sad that he'd had to figure that out and tell her; wasn't it supposed to be the other way around? The mother helping the son with his love troubles? There was a long moment of silence before she managed one single, clear, and utterly factual thought:

"Men are incredibly stupid."

Brady shrugged his agreement. She was pretty sure both of them shed more tears silently while the embrace lasted, but after a while he pulled away and stood, drawing his sleeve over his face.

"I should beat it; I'm sure he'll be around to apologize soon. Owain always does."

Maribelle doubted that Vaike had ever apologized for anything in his life, but she dried her eyes as well and nodded. "Yes. I…well, thank you, Brady."

"Sure, M—" He cut himself off and started again: "Mother."

He was gone by the time she turned around, eyebrows raised, and they raised even further when she saw Vaike approaching.

"I, uh, thought your ol' Vaike would find you here," he said as he came to a stop near her, sounding strangely awkward. "I was asking around and Owain, of all people, pointed me in this direction. Guess he heard me shouting. Said somebody he knew always went somewhere quiet, after a battle, to get things in order."

"If you've come to call me useless again, I won't stand for it." She turned away from him and proudly recited what Brady had told her: "I'm the best healer we have."

"Yeah. I know that." She heard him scratch his head, and then hem and haw for a while.

"Vaike, are you here to apologize or not!"

"I am! I just gotta think of the right words! I really want to do it good!"

"Do it well!"

"That too!"

She turned back to him, slightly placated, lips pursed as she waited. It was rather endearing how hard he'd tried to learn to be a gentleman for her, after they'd gotten engaged. Sometimes he nearly managed it.

"Look, I…I should never have yelled. I just freaked, I guess. All I could think about was that arrow going straight through your eye. I couldn't have stopped it. Nobody could have. I was…I felt like a real heel. Or something."

"Ashamed?" she supplied, surprised.

"Yeah, that's it. I was ashamed. If you'd died, it woulda been my fault, almost, because I couldn't save you. Wasn't strong enough. So I tried to make you feel weak, instead. That was really bad. I'm never gonna do that again."

Well, it certainly wasn't eloquent—Brady surely got better. But if Maribelle loved Vaike for anything, it was for his sincerity. His sheer determination to do right by others; to impress, them, even.

"I'm not impressed," she said, nose in the air, and his face fell but she patted the ground next to her. "Regardless, I see that your apology was made in good faith and thus I accept it."

"Thanks," he said, cheering as he settled. "So can I give you a make-up kiss, or what?"

"One," she said, intending to be a little cold still, but she couldn't help but melt when he cupped her face to do it. He was surprisingly gentle about those sorts of things. She let it deepen, and let it linger, and let herself sigh when she pulled away.

"You brute," she recovered quickly, "you've interrupted my bath. I hope you're happy."

"Maybe I can join you. I'll find a way to make it up to you."

"I am a lady and you will do no such thing."

"But I'm your husband."

She had to smile, at that, although she turned her face to hide it from him. He never called her his wife and instead always referred to himself as her husband. As if he was grateful for it, or needed to remind himself that it was real.

"I will permit you to watch," she said finally, calmly, and ignored his crass whistle—and the way her heart fluttered—as she stood and started unlacing her bodice. "But no more than that!"

"Yes, m'lady. No more than that."

"But I reserve the right to change my mind! You peasants are always better at expressing your sentiments physically, and I deserve a more elaborate apology."

Her smile was getting too big to hide from him, and he was already laughing, so she hurried into the water and ducked under the surface.

xXx

"Where were you, all afternoon?" Owain asked as Brady ducked into their tent, looking up from whatever nonsense he was penning in his journal.

"Don't wanna talk about it. It's been a weird day of relationship advice and I'm pretty sure that for Ma, at least, it's ending in—gah." He couldn't make himself say it.

"Yeah. Weird." Even Owain could not find a way to say it better. "Let me take your mind off that."

"Please."

Brady settled down at Owain's feet and rested his head on his knee, and Owain started reading from his book:

"Long ago, before the mists of time had settled, there was a most useful and talented cleric named Brady. O, holiest of the damned! Boon to all armies! Counsellor of men and—you know, I was looking for another 'm' word to put there, for the alliterative value. 'Men and mothers.' That's perfect."

Brady groaned, but closed his eyes and let Owain continue until he'd dozed off. He was awoken again by bickering outside the tent that sounded suspiciously like Ma and Dad again.

"It seems I must edit already," said Owain. "Bad counsellor of men and mothers."

"There we go."