A/N: Because there's no way Corrin was raised by someone as emotionally abusive as Garon without winding up with issues.
Takes place after the end of Revelation. Includes some slight spoilers about Corrin and Azura's epilogue, and a pretty major spoiler about Garon. Also assumes the kids were not born during the game, which is probably non-canon anyway because the explanation behind it is really dumb.
"What is the son but an extension of the father?" – Frank Herbert
Azura rolled over and instantly woke up as she met with air instead of a warm body. Her hands patted the empty space where her husband should have been. "Corrin?"
She raised her head when he didn't respond, trying to peer through the darkness cloaking their room. It must have been the dead of night; the candle by their bed was burned completely out. A thin sliver of moonlight slid through the gap in the curtain, bisecting the shadows—not much to see by, but just enough for her to tell that her husband wasn't present. The spot next to her was still warm, though, so he couldn't have been gone long.
Slowly, she rose from the bed, gasping as she put one hand on the wall to steady herself, the other assuming its customary position over her belly. At seven months with child she felt like a whale sometimes, huge and uncoordinated. For a dancer like her, the change was particularly jarring, and difficult to adjust to—the day she'd realized she couldn't see her feet anymore had brought forth an unusual burst of tears.
Azura grimaced at the memory. Her pregnancy had not been an easy one, so far. The mood-swings were stressful and hard to handle for someone so used to being emotionally composed. The cravings were mercifully over now, but they'd been terrible while they lasted—sometimes she thought she could still taste pickle juice in her mouth. Her feet were constantly sore, and she could definitely have lived without the supernaturally strong kicks to her insides, likely inherited from the child's half-dragon father.
But then—then there were the other things, the things that brought a smile to her face just by thinking about them. The congratulations and support from their friends and family and subjects. The excitement and anticipation as her belly swelled with new life. Picking names and writing them down on a clean sheet of parchment. Watching as the nursery was constructed, as the toys and cradle and tiny clothes were added to it. The look of love and awe on Corrin's face as he pressed one ear to her stomach. Those were what made everything worthwhile.
Azura shook the memories away, rubbing the crust from her eyes. She cleared her throat and called louder. "Corrin?"
Still no response. As quickly as she could, she waddled out of their bedroom, worry for her wayward husband gnawing on her heart.
Said worry loosened its fangs quickly, for she instantly spotted Corrin by the window in the main room of their suite, clad in only his sleeping trousers. The curtains were thrust wide open, allowing the moonlight to dance across his pale hair and the bare skin of his torso, tinting them white. He was absent-mindedly swirling a late-night glass of wine in one hand, his gaze fixated on the stars, his frame stiff as a board. That gave Azura pause—her husband was a relaxed, open person, easy-going and jovial by nature, a stark contrast to her own reserved personality. For him to clam up, even just physically, meant something very heavy was weighing on his mind.
He jumped when she laid a hand on his arm. "Corrin."
"Azura…" The half-dragon turned towards her, eyes automatically sweeping over her form, taking inventory to make sure nothing was amiss. It was something he did constantly now that she was approaching the end months of her pregnancy. His recent behavior veered on over-protectiveness at times, and depending on her mood Azura would either laugh or scowl at it, but she felt like neither now. Not when her love's eyes were so sad. "Shouldn't you be in bed?"
"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" she countered, harsher than she'd intended. She softened her tone. "What are you doing up this late?"
"Ah…" He turned away from her to place the glass on a nearby table stand, in what Azura knew was a thin cover to hide his face as he attempted a lie. "Nothing."
"Don't do that with me." She reached over and gently turned his face towards her with one hand. "Tell me what's wrong."
"Wrong?" The false cheeriness in Corrin's voice would have fooled anyone but her. "Nothing's wrong. I couldn't sleep, so I decided to admire the stars for a bit, that's all."
She fixed him with a glare that would have had Anankos himself shaking. Resigned, Corrin's shoulders slumped; he sighed and looked at the ground.
"…Alright, fine. I was just thinking that…" He hesitated for a long moment; when he finally spoke again, it was too quietly for Azura to hear.
She frowned and leaned in. "What did you say?"
"I don't know if I'm cut out to be a father."
Silence settled. Azura blinked at him owlishly. A response automatically leapt to her tongue—that's the most absurd thing I've ever heard—but she clamped down on it. While she knew her husband appreciated her blunt honesty, this sort of subject seemed like one where tact was appreciated more. Instead, she asked, carefully, "What makes you say that?"
His lips thinned into an unhappy line, but he did not respond.
The answer came to Azura in a sudden flash of insight. Hate curdled her tone as she spat the name, "Garon."
"Who else?" Corrin asked rhetorically, lifting one shoulder in a bitter half-shrug. "Like father, like son, they say. Adoptive father, in this case, but still."
His attempt at humor fell flat. Azura didn't know what disturbed her more, the fact that her husband, one of the sweetest people alive, had been even contemplating this outlandish idea—for quite some time, apparently—or the fact that she hadn't noticed. "Corrin, you can't possiblythink you'd resemble Garon as a father."
"Can't I?" he snapped. He pulled away, passing a hand over his face. "Him and his 'paternal affection' are all I know about fatherhood. If that's what I'm supposed to base my behavior off, how can I not end up like him?"
"If you don't want to be like him, then just do the opposite of what he did—"
"It's not as simple as that!" he shouted. She flinched; Corrin rarely yelled. A look of self-loathing crossed his face when he saw her reaction, and he turned back towards the window, seemingly drained.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled, downcast. "I told myself I'd do just that. I told myself I'd just act opposite of Garon, and it'd be fine. But—I was walking the gardens today, and I saw one of the nobles disciplining his son for bad behavior, and I realized I don't know how to do that. I know the extremes of doing nothing or doing too much, but I don't know how to balance a punishment."
He was getting agitated again; he'd started pacing now, taking short strides to and from her, hands pulling silvery clumps of hair. "And then I realized there's so much else I don't know how to do—how to comfort a child after a nightmare, how to care for them when they're sick, how to even play with them. 'The opposite of Garon' is too general, too big a void for me to know how to navigate."
"That still doesn't mean you'll become him! The Garon who raised you wasn't even the real one—"
"That doesn't matter!" Corrin yelled. "Whether he was the real Garon or not, that monster was all I had for a father! Everything I learned about parenthood comes from him! What else do I have to fall back on but what he taught me? What else can I be as a father except him?"
"Yourself! You can just be yourself!"
"But what if I'm not good enough?! Azura—" And suddenly his face crumpled, and it felt like a blow to her chest. "What if there's something wrong with me, some part of me that's just incapable of parental love, because I never received any? What if I can't love the baby? What if I end up holding it to impossibly high standards? What if I end up making it feel small and worthless with just a look? What if I end up doing to it what Garon did to me?"
"You won't!" she cried out, frustrated and anguished at once. She grabbed his face and forced him to look at her, putting as much feeling into her words as she could. "You won't, Corrin. You'll be the type of father who'll spoil it rotten, the type who loves it so much it could suffocate. You'll be the type who embarrasses it by being so—so endearingly you—but the type who secretly pleases it, too. Because it'll know its father is a good man who loves it to death. And it will love you too."
Their child chose that moment to make itself known by kicking her ribs. Hiding her grimace at the pain—the baby was almost absurdly strong—she grabbed Corrin's hand and pressed it against her stomach. As if sensing its father's distress, the baby kicked again. "See?" she gasped out. "He agrees with me."
Corrin inhaled sharply; she could feel his fingers trembling against her. Gently, she tugged him towards her for a hug; he curled around her as best he could with her heavy belly between them, burying his face in her hair. Azura pressed her face into the crook of his neck and closed her eyes, inhaling his familiar scent. For a moment, husband and wife stayed there, motionless, taking comfort in each other's arms.
"You'll make mistakes," Azura finally murmured, "but so will I. Knowledge is one thing, but experience is another. You studied the basics of combat as a child, but would you say that made you a skilled warrior, right then and there?"
"No," Corrin responded after a pause. "I hadn't been to battle yet. There were things I couldn't know until I went. There are some things you just…" He trailed off, understanding dawning on him.
"Some things you just learn by doing," she finished. "And I think parenthood is one of them." She pulled back and cupped his face again, gentler this time. "Youare not Garon, Corrin. Not the real one, not the fake one. You have far more love and kindness in you then he ever did. And if you ever started acting like him, you can be sure I'd have something to say about it."
Corrin was silent, and for a heartbeat she was terrified that her words hadn't reached him. But then a wry smile curled around his lips, and he shook his head, chuckling lowly. "What would I do without you?"
"Wallow in guilt and self-hatred every time you messed up," she responded frankly, relieved.
That got a full laugh out of him, clear and strong. Azura was pleased to note that his eyes were brighter now, their red irises unclouded by doubt and despair.
She smiled, then doubled over as the baby kicked her again. "Oof, that hurt," she hissed. "You're really awake now, huh?"
"Guess she doesn't like her parents arguing," Corrin remarked. He crouched down and pressed his mouth to her stomach, murmuring his next words to the fabric of her dress and the child beneath. "Daddy's sorry, honey. But you have to stop kicking your mother, okay? She was just helping Daddy out, and you're very strong."
"He," she couldn't help correcting—their constant, light-hearted squabbles about their child's gender were familiar, easy to fall back on to change the atmosphere into something lighter and safer. "I'm the one carrying him, I think I know best what he is."
Her husband went along with the change in subject easily enough, humming thoughtfully before launching a cheeky response. "No, I'm pretty sure she's a girl. That's why she's always kicking you, you keep getting her gender wrong."
"I will be so glad once my womb is no longer being used as a training dummy."
Corrin laughed, any lingering tension falling away from his shoulders. He rose and kissed her, then; Azura closed her eyes and deepened it, hands winding up to fist into the hair at the nape of his neck. One of his hands went to the small of her back; the other rested on the curve of her stomach. The next few minutes passed with them simply absorbed in relishing the sensations of the kiss.
"We should get back to bed," she mumbled when they finally broke apart.
"You head back, I'll be there shortly." At her skeptical look, Corrin added, "Don't worry, I'm done brooding. I just want to finish my wine."
She sighed. "Well, don't stay up too late. We have a kingdom to run tomorrow."
"Don't I know it," he groaned. Azura giggled, knowing he was thinking of the endless meetings and paperwork that came with ruling Valla. She gave him a final peck and started to waddle back to their bedroom. At the doorway, however, she turned back, lingering.
"Corrin…" He'd started to reach for his abandoned glass of wine, but at the sound of his name he paused and glanced at her, a quizzical expression on his face.
Azura smiled. "You'll be a great father. You already are."
She watched his throat bob as he swallowed, seemingly choked with emotion. But the smile he gave her was full of gratitude and love, and if his eyes were glimmering a bit with tears, well, she wouldn't say anything.