My first fic! I loved Corrin and Felicia's S-support in the game but I felt that, considering the characters and their motivations involved, it could be expanded upon. This is my shot at doing that. Constructive criticism highly encouraged!

The air was dry but it was wet on the ground. Felicia climbed atop her stool and started pulling sheets off the line. It was hung up a on a small grassy spot on the castle grounds where it could get the most amount of sun. But it had rained recently, and the stool she was standing on, on wet grass and slick mud, was even less stable than usual. "Okay Felicia we're fine. Just two more sheets to go and we're done. With this I'll finally have one thing that I didn't mess up today," she mumbled to herself. She got the first sheet fine with no problems, but the last one was a little farther to the right. She shifted her balance a bit to reach, and now her weight was just enough to make the stool tip over.

"Whoa!" She reflexively clutched the last sheet to try and stabilize, only to snap it off the line while she fell backward onto the soft-weave basket of clean sheets behind her. She landed with a soft thud but was unharmed. "Not again…" Lying on her back, she blinked at the sun, propped herself up and immediately froze in horror. "Oh no. Oh no…" The basket spilled out onto the ground, and the carefully folded pile of sheets were now splayed and drenched in mud. "Please no! No, no, no!" She hastily picked up every sodden sheet, stuffed them in the basket and ran as fast as she could into the back of the mess hall, hoping no one would notice the newest product of her incompetence and her reddening wet face. But someone had been looking for her.

"Felicia? There you are! Hey, wait!" Felicia glimpsed red eyes and sharp ears as she zipped through the door.

She kept running toward the kitchen. Her dear master Corrin showing up now was the only way this day could get any worse. She went to the pantry in the back. It was her favorite little corner to be alone. She pulled the door shut behind her and slumped, out of breath, down into a little nook between a sack of potatoes and a barrel of cabbages in the dark. She felt for the driest sheet she could find from the basket to hug. She heard nothing but her own weeps. "Good," she thought. "I lost him."

Whenever she looked at him, she thought of the countless times she saw him with Azura. Azura was everything she wasn't: graceful, elegant, serene and calm. She also had the prettiest singing voice that anyone would be lucky to hear. She was also a princess. Felicia on the other hand tripped over herself, got embarrassed easily, broke household implements on a regular basis, and couldn't talk for long without her voice quivering. She was also not royalty.

When she and her sister Flora were thirteen, still in the northern fortress with their imprisoned master, the old strict knight Gunter didn't mince words. "You do not fraternize with the prince." He said. "You are far below his station. You are maids and your job is to serve. Maids who are caught doing anything untoward with their masters will be executed immediately. Understand?"

Times were different now. Corrin left behind Nohr and his apparent birthplace of Hoshido and Felicia followed him. But Gunter's words still rang in her head.

"I knew I'd find you here." A familiar voice broke her thoughts.

Felicia put her hand to her eyes as light flooded the room and sat up. "Oh, h-hello lord Corrin. You… saw everything didn't you?" She attacked the tears still running down her cheeks with a sleeve.

His back was to the light but she could still see his face. He smiled warmly. "Yes, but that's okay. Cheer up Felicia! Everything will be alright. Everyone makes mistakes."

"But what kind of maid oversleeps then puts her clothes on inside-out? And then ruins everyone's breakfasts and drops their sheets in the mud?" She gritted her teeth. "I'm not cut out for this milord. I've tried so hard and-and nothing works." Another pang hit her as she met his gaze for just a moment. She hid her eyes in the sheet. "Maybe I should quit and go home."

He chuckled. "That's pretty impressive for one morning. It could be a new record for you. Maybe quitting wouldn't be such a bad idea. Haha!"

She looked up at him. "Please don't say that."

Corrin's face changed. "You were… Serious, weren't you?" She nodded. He shuffled his feet. "Giving up isn't like you, Felicia. You've always told me that helping others is what keeps you going and you've never stopped. Even now that we're free of the fortress and out at war you've been the determined way you've always been. Why stop now?"

"Huh? Well, that's, um, mostly true. Sort of. It's true that I do what I do to serve others." Mostly you, she thought. "I like serving others even though I'm bad at it because helping makes me feel useful. Feeling useful makes me feel happy too." She looked away again. "But I'm really not that selfless. I have-… I've had my reasons. That's all." Why couldn't he just leave and let her ruminate in peace?

Corrin's face hardened. "Then I want to know something. Can you tell me something?"

"O-of course, milord."

"I remember way back when I was dragged onto that battlefield with Hoshido, facing down Xander and my Nohrian siblings, not really knowing what I was doing but still wanting do what I thought was right. I abandoned all of them. I didn't want to be part of their senseless conflict. But I was scared. I knew I was probably going to die because I betrayed them. It was just me and Azura… That is, at least, until you showed up. You joined us without a second thought and helped us retreat. We would probably be dead right now if not for you." He raised his voice. "But I want to know! You could've gone home then. You could've slipped away to the Ice Tribe like your sister, but you abandoned them just to join stupid me-A dumb prince who had signed his death wish. Why?"

Was he really this selfish? How could he be so dense? She pulled herself up, lost her balance and almost fell back down but caught herself, got on her feet, and threw her sheet at Corrin as hard as she could. It missed his face and tapped his stomach before plopping to the ground. "Do I really have to spell it out for you?!"

His mouth hung open. "Wh-wha? S-spell out what?" Her sudden ferocity caught him off guard. She'd never been this upset with him before.

She clenched her hands into fists. "I LOVE you! I stayed with you because I believed in you! At the time I had nowhere else I wanted to go! I wanted you to be safe! I stayed with you because…!" Fresh tears poured down her face as she struggled to stay defiant. But her voice quivered once again and she shook her head. "I-it was because, because I-I wanted to be with you…" She collapsed back into her corner, facing the dark. Corrin's stunned form, mouth agape, was blocking the entrance so there was no point in running away. There was no going back now. "People have always turned the other way even though I mess up all the time because I can fight but you were the only one who was nice to me no matter what. You didn't care how much of a klutz I was. I couldn't help it. Not th-that matters. It's forbidden love… Gunter told me and Flora that our heads would come off if we were caught… being with you. Royal marriages are important so a prince sh-should never marry a maid. Not that you would love a stupid, frumpy girl like me who just spills tea on your lap all the time." She sniffed. "I'll leave and go back to my Tribe now, whenever."

She never wanted to make a scene. She never wanted her beloved master to worry or be stressed out, especially when he had the incredible responsibility of a war on his shoulders. But fighting with him on the front lines, protecting his flanks with her knife and ice magic and watching his back, knowing that a stray arrow or a plume of spell-flame could destroy his life at any instant if she and his friends were distracted or made a mistake was too much to bear any longer. With her eyes shut tight and her body curled up with her arms around her knees, trying to make herself disappear through sheer compaction, she expected to hear him sigh or laugh awkwardly and say she could stay but he'd never reciprocate her feelings. She didn't expect what happened next. Distracted by her thoughts and weeps, she didn't see or hear him step closer and crouch down beside her. She almost jumped when she heard him so close to her ear.

"Felicia…" His breaths were uneven. "Felicia… I-I love you too."