When Maribelle had been rescued back at the border, pure relief filled her soul, the hope of living a long, healthy life returning to her. After all, she was just about to be cut down by Plegians, and for what? To make everyone else suffer her loss. She wasn't going to permit that, and so when Ricken came to her rescue, she hurried off with him without waiting even a single moment. When a Plegian soldier cornered the two of them, she found herself risking Ricken to save her own hide, as shameful as that was. She didn't want to die, she didn't want to hurt anyone. She didn't want to hurt Lissa.
Oh, Lissa. The two of them had met when they were small children, and despite Lissa's unending exuberance clashing with Maribelle's calm and refined demeanor, the two of them became friends almost instantly. Over the years, their bond had only brought them closer together. Of course, Maribelle had no way to get inside of Lissa's head, but she liked to think that her dearest companion missed her greatly whenever they were apart. Maribelle knew she did.
Maribelle's sense of self-preservation continued to dominate her instincts, keeping her from getting beheaded more than once. It was if the blood in her veins had been replaced with pure, unfiltered adrenaline, removing any exhaustion, any pain, any fear. She was going to live, and she was going to see everyone again. She was going to fight another day, no matter who got in her way.
Then, she saw it; a path that winded like a serpent up to a cliff face that seemed to encircle the entire mountain. On that cliff face was that horrid woman, Aversa, who had almost killed her when the battle had first begun. And in her grip, screaming and kicking and squirming, was Lissa. Whatever self-preservation instincts that were driving Maribelle vanished instantly, replaced with the need to save her friend. Rocks tore up her boots, slashing against her feet, but she kept running, trying to get to them.
A blast of magic hit Maribelle square in the shoulder before she could get far. It sent her flying, hitting the dirt jaw-first, making her bite her tongue hard enough for her to immediately taste blood. Despite the intense pain she was feeling, she struggled to her feet, watching Aversa leisurely stroll away with Lissa, the princess still screaming at the top of her lungs. Maribelle staggered after them, even as their forms, already small, grew fainter and fainter, disappearing into the dust clouding the air. Even once they were out of sight, she kept going, trying to ignore how her shoulder was further back than it was supposed to be, or how her tongue kept bleeding, forcing her to occasionally spit out a mouthful of blood.
Eventually, Maribelle's torn-up feet refused to listen to her anymore, and she found herself collapsing to the dirt. The rest of her body, and eventually her mind, came to an agreement with the same thought her feet had. Lissa was gone. Maribelle could never catch up. She had failed to save her. A raw, uninhibited scream was all she could muster, hearing it echo through the various mountains and rock faces. Maybe it even made its way to Lissa.
Once Maribelle was found by the others and given probably more Vulneraries in a short period of time than was safe, she had to be the one to tell Chrom. Nobody else had seen it happen. "Milord, I bear…I bear grave news." The pain from her injuries could still be felt, and the number of Vulneraries she had drank made her want to wretch. "Your sister, she…she was taken. I watched it happen, I tried to stop them, but I…I wasn't strong enough."
She was already crying. Damnit, she needed to get ahold of herself! She was a noblewoman, an inheritor of her father's Dukedom, yet here she was, sobbing like an infant! Not only that, but she was stealing the chance to grieve from Chrom. She knew that, she knew that her crying made him have to be the strong one, to hold her and tell her everything was going to be perfectly alright, but she needed to cry. She hated crying, but it was the only thing she could do.
They had been looking at her. Everyone was denying it, but Maribelle knew they had been looking at her. She was the one who let the enemy capture Princess Lissa. She was the one who in all likelihood had gotten her killed. If not that, then who knew what kind of tortures Lissa was enduring at that very moment? The thought of it spread through her active imagination, painting pictures visceral enough to make her have to rush into the woods before vomiting her lunch all over the ground.
One night, Lissa came to her in her dreams. She seemed to have some sort of aura around her, a presence that made Maribelle feel things she had never felt before, a pining, a longing, a desperate desire to fall into her arms. They stepped closer to eachother, each footfall sending waves of anticipation through the air. They were close enough for Maribelle to feel her breath hit her face, and then Lissa leaned forward, her eyes closing, her—
Maribelle woke up. In a matter of seconds, she had thrown up in the bucket she now kept in her tent at all times. Right after that, she threw up again. After that, Maribelle ate far less. Less to vomit up meant a less miserable experience when she was vomiting. Sure, she got thinner, sure, her skin became paler and her energy became lower, but it was better than the alternative. Robin entered her tent once, sitting down and having a long talk about Maribelle's mental state.
"Maribelle, I'm going to be blunt about this. I believe that Lissa's capture has dealt a massive blow to your psyche. I've no doubt you're already suffering depression, considering how rarely you seem to want to anything anymore. Guilt, self-loathing, perhaps even anxiety. These kinds of conditions can ruin a person, Maribelle. You're sharp as a knife, you have to understand the consequences of this."
"…What do you expect me to do?" Maribelle could barely even muster a whisper. "Do you expect me to simply wake up tomorrow with a smile on my face, 'pep in my step', as Stahl would say, and perform all of my tasks with exuberance? Do you expect me to see the world as daisies and sunshine when we're fighting a war?"
"That's not what I expect. I don't expect anything from you, because you owe me nothing that would let me expect that. What I'm telling you is that you're teetering on an edge. If you tip over that edge, I doubt you'll be able to come back. So please, try and save yourself. What happened to Lissa was not your fault."
Hearing that gave Maribelle the strength to raise her voice. "It's ENTIRELY my fault! I saw her there, me. I was the only one who could help her, but I couldn't. I had never learned any offensive magic, I wasn't as fast or as strong as anyone else in the Shepherds, and those things were my fault! It's because of me that Lissa is likely either dead or wishing she was! Do you even know, Robin, what it's like to see her being dragged away while you lie helpless on the ground? Do you know what it's like to spend day after day knowing that what happened was because of you?"
Robin stopped talking for a while, looking down at her lap. Eventually, she took a deep breath. "You're right, Maribelle. I don't know what any of that is like. But I know what it's like to love someone. I know what it's like to see that person put in danger, to want with every fiber of your being to save them. I know what it's like to love a person so much that you feel you have to stake your whole existence, your whole reason for fighting, on them."
There had been rumors that Robin and Chrom were in some sort of relationship. A few whispers of them sneaking to the forest when they believed no one was watching, some mutterings of them instinctually holding hands before realizing they were not in the right place, hastily trying to look as indifferent to eachother as possible. But that was all they were; rumors. What Robin said, however, told Maribelle that the rumors were true. Robin wasn't daft, she knew what she said would allow Maribelle to learn the truth. So why did she tell her? "You love her," Robin said with a soft smile. "Don't you?"
"I…" With her own psyche unable to lie to her anymore, to insist it was just a friendship, Maribelle had no way of keeping herself from her own feelings anymore. She loved Lissa more than anything in the world. She'd trade it all; her inheritance, her place in the Shepherds, her money, her status, even her own life, just to see Lissa safe. Every time Lissa stepped into view, Maribelle's mood brightened. Every giggle following a successful prank made Maribelle experience that happiness tenfold. Her soft, delicate features, the way she tried to deny them, getting that embarrassed flush of red on her cheeks that she always did, frowning and pouting, made Maribelle's heart melt.
Before Maribelle even knew what she was doing, she was embracing Robin as tightly as she could, sobbing and weeping and hiccupping from the sheer sorrow she was letting out. Her cries weren't delicate, they weren't soft, they were ugly and disgusting and loud and unending. Just the mere thought of Lissa hurting was making Maribelle feel as if her entire world had been stolen from her and razed to the ground right in front of her eyes.
Robin and Maribelle kept eachothers' secrets. In truth, Maribelle felt as if she had gained some sort of sisterhood with the tactician. And so, for Robin's sake, she carried on. She ate her meals, she did her chores with more energy, she fought with everything she had. The Ylissean army advanced into Plegia, hoping to rescue Emmeryn before it was too late. Maribelle felt numb to the entire cause of striking down Gangrel and ending the war. She only cared about the royal palace, the place where Lissa, if she was still alive, was undoubtedly being held. After Emmeryn fell, Chrom entered a sort of battle-hungry trance that Maribelle never thought the man could fall into. Robin expressed secretly how scared she was, not only of what kind of dangers Chrom was putting himself into but of the dangers he posed to others. He would lose his temper at the smallest annoyance, he would strike a training dummy until it was nothing but smashed up junk.
While Maribelle had reacted to loss by giving up, Chrom's loss was what drove him to fight Gangrel in the midst of the final battle. Maribelle wasn't there to see it, but she was told that their confrontation was one for the history books. He and Robin fought the Mad King, trading blows, parrying and dodging and grazing eachother until they had become exhausted from the fight. Gangrel took advantage of this, striking Robin in the chest, his sword embedding itself, as a cleric would later reveal, less than an inch from her heart. Chrom, believing her to be dead, summoned the ferocity to strike down Gangrel with one fell swoop.
In the medical tent, being tended to by three different clerics at once, Robin held Chrom's hand, her face pale and her grip nearly nonexistent. Nobody was sure if she was going to make it. Even so, even with her own mortality staring her in the eyes, she still asked Chrom right then and there if he would marry her. No ring, no special occasion, no surprise or romantic atmosphere, just a dingy medical tent with dried blood caking the bedsheets and clerics that were barely stopping themselves from passing out from overworking. Chrom said yes, and that was that.
The future queen of Ylisse survived her wound, with her souvenirs being a large scar on her chest and a lingering sensation of burning that would occasionally reemerge, forcing her to keep a Vulnerary on hand at all times to dull the pain. Funnily enough, she kept the Levin Sword that Gangrel had used to deal the near-fatal blow. When Maribelle asked why, Robin told her that the injury made her feel as if she and the blade shared some sort of unspoken connection. After all, the only other thing that had gotten closer to her heart was Chrom. She joked that if he had said no, she would've married the sword instead.
Resistance from Plegia's army after Gangrel's death was virtually nonexistent. A large portion of it had already ceased their fighting due to Emmeryn's sacrifice, so his death served more as a final nail in the coffin for their morale. Of course, Maribelle couldn't have cared less about the wide-reaching effects of the war. All she cared about was getting into that palace. The Ylissean army had already begun to establish themselves within, but due to the time it took to do so, they hadn't yet properly secured the entire area. She didn't bother listening to their requests to take an escort, knowing that it'd just slow her down.
The sound of Maribelle's heart thumping seemed to her louder than her feet clacking against the dark marble floors. There were still plenty of Plegian nobles, soldiers, and servants, but any who tried to stop her were met with the Ylissean Royal Seal she carried with her at all times, signifying her as someone who reported directly to the royal family. That stopped anybody right in their tracks and saved her from having to resort to violence. The idea of her getting in a fight with one of these people would have seemed foreign to her months ago, before Lissa was first taken. But now, she wasn't just ready; she was looking forward to having the excuse. If someone got too physical, she'd be well within her rights to beat them senseless, and the idea of that was a rather pleasant one. It would be as if she was taking revenge for whatever had happened to Lissa.
What had happened to Lissa? Maribelle's fears were dissuaded upon one day coming to the conclusion that if Lissa had been executed, Gangrel would have certainly sent ample proof in order to goad Chrom further. So she was alive, but that by no means meant that she was safe in any capacity. Even setting aside conventional torture methods, it was no secret that a sizeable portion of Plegia's nobility was Grimleal. The methods that worshippers of the Fell Dragon could employ were the ones that kept Maribelle up at night whenever she wondered about Lissa.
Down into the dungeons she went, carrying a torch that only illuminated a few feet ahead of her. The marble floors were replaced with rough, cracked stone, unable to hide its age. This place was so dead, so barren, that not even mildew could thrive in its environment. The air itself seemed long-dead, rough and coarse without the sting that the sandy wastes above carried. As she descended deeper and deeper into its depths, she felt like the walls were closing her, unsure if they actually were or if it was simply her anxieties getting the better of her.
Each cell contained a prisoner, but few were even in a state where Maribelle could feel pity for them. Some were rambling and screaming about the heinous things they had done, or perhaps they were the heinous things that had been done to them. Their sanity had slipped away long ago, replaced by babbling akin to that of a child's accompanied by sunken eyes, cracked fingernails, and skin that was so filthy and dry that Maribelle could have sworn that some of it was rotting.
The ones that Maribelle did feel sorry for were the ones who had already passed. Some corpses were ancient, nothing but bones with scraps of decomposing flesh still clinging onto them. Others were still new, likely having starved due to the palace's attention being focused solely on the invading army. Not everybody was on one side of those extremes. Some were still in the process of being slowly torn to shreds by maggots, the stench reminding her of the smell of the aftermath of their rain-soaked battle against Plegian forces within the massive bones of what was assumed to be the Fell Dragon. Except that smell was at least somewhat softened by the scent of fresh rainfall being consumed by the hungry earth. This was raw, fresh, undeterred and free to drift across every inch of space that it could. Maribelle hurried away before she could wretch. She'd had enough of that for one war.
The important prisoners were held deeper within behind solid doors rather than simple steel bars. Some of these cells were clearly inhabited, judging by the constant banging on the doors, but peeking through the small windows that granted her a glimpse of the rooms yielded nothing but more deranged or dead prisoners. It surprised her that she was so calm by this point. If all of these people were in such a state, then Lissa's fate was almost certainly just as cruel, yet Maribelle didn't allow that thought to control her. A composed, calm mind would be what would get her through this.
The hallway stretched on for so long that every pair of cell doors, one on either side, began to blend together in a hazy blur of the same sight repeated over and over and over again. Was Maribelle even making any progress? Would she ever reach the end of this corridor? Despite the death surrounding her, she didn't believe that any specters were stalking these halls. Rather, the halls were the specters, entrapping her in an endless maze that only went one direction, slowly engulfing her with the stench of stale air punctuated by rotting flesh, the sound of maggots squirming over muscles and tissue and gods, could she actually hear the maggots? She could hear the maggots, but she couldn't hear the flies. Why couldn't she hear the flies?
The end of the hall was in front of her. How long had she been looking at it without realizing it was there? Was this even the end, or would it simply reveal another stretch of cells behind it, like some sadistic joke preying on her unraveling mind, threatening to pull out the one string that was still keeping together? Threatening to keep Lissa from her. She didn't even care if Lissa was alive or not. Even if she was nothing but a lifeless sack of meat and bones and skin and ligaments and eyes, empty eyes, eyes that were trying to find a savior, someone to save her, someone who would never arrive and end up leaving her to die cold and alone, wondering if anyone truly loved her enough to save her in the first place, even then, Maribelle would still cradle her, hold her tight as if the rest of the world didn't matter anymore, sit with her until she too began to starve to death, just whispering in Lissa's ear whatever she could think of, whatever she wanted to say but never could and now could only utter to ears that couldn't hear, a mind that couldn't process those words, a beautiful, enrapturing maiden that would still shine with that aura that followed her wherever she went, snuffing out the darkness threatening to consume her, only she couldn't consume it this time, it consumed her, it ate her and spat her back out to mock Maribelle.
She opened the door. It was easier than expected, really. No doubt nobody thought someone would make it this far, and even if they did, they would never make it back. The cell was spacious yet cramped, its walls side but its ceiling so low that even Maribelle, not exactly the tallest person out there, almost had to stoop her head low in order to not hit it. Where was Lissa? Maribelle waved her torch around, silently begging its light to show her the way, to show her the woman she needed to see again, to touch again.
In the corner, almost invisible, was a girl with long, blonde hair that stretched down to her waist, wearing nothing whatsoever, completely still, her skin pale enough to pass her off as a corpse if she sat still enough. Only, she wasn't sitting still. She was trembling just visibly enough for Maribelle to see. Without a word, the noblewoman approached, kneeling down and placing a gentle hand on the girl's back.
Lissa screamed, lunging out at Maribelle and knocking the torch from her hands, sending it skidding across the ground and hitting the wall. Sharp fingernails clawed at wherever they could, cutting Maribelle's cheek, her arm, yanking on her hair. "LISSA! LISSA, STOP!" She screamed, but the girl kept attacking. Her face was obscured completely by the darkness. Maribelle needed to see it. She needed to see Lissa.
Maribelle shoved Lissa off of her, getting on top and pinning her to the ground, reaching for the torch while Lissa screamed and struggled. Once she had a firm hold on the torch, she held it next to her own face, illuminating the both of them. Lissa stopped, her eyes staring into Maribelle's, reading every little movement, every twitch, every dilation of the pupil. Maribelle stared back, noting the primal fear, the trembling of her lip, the hope that she once carried in spades seemingly snuffed out.
Lissa cried. She cried in what could be interpreted as either utter hopelessness or terrified ecstasy, fearful that Maribelle would be snatched away back into the dark, leaving her all alone yet again. Maribelle started to whisper whatever soothing words could come into her mind, not even paying attention to what she was saying. Instead, her eyes scanned the rest of Lissa's form, noting how thin she had become, how even when laying flat on the floor she was hunched, as if curling into a ball was just how she lived. Then, she focused on Lissa's right hand, and the symbol engraved on it, pulsating with a gentle, soft purple light, almost giving it a calming appearance. The mark of Grima. The same mark Robin bore on her right hand, in the same place.
It was then that Maribelle realized what she had been whispering the whole time. The same words over and over, as if she needed to convince herself more than Lissa. "It's alright now. You're safe. It's alright now. I'm here. It's alright now."