Disclaimer and Notes: Fire Emblem belongs to Nintendo.

I finished Fates: Conquest last night and in looking around for the pairing I chose for my avatar in fanfiction-land, I found precious little of it. At the very least, here is an attempt at a contemplative fic about the wonderfully nutty Odin Dark. Spoilers and Awakening references abound.

ODIN THE WANDERER

"Behold! Prepare yourself for the tale of… a man! A man born into the deepest darkness! A man who laughed at the confines of time, itself!"

"… A man called Odin Dark…" Corrin sighed.

"It's better than The Man with No Name, right?" Odin yelped.

Odin was telling his stories again. Corrin actually enjoyed his tall tales more than she let on and found it sweet that he reserved the strangest and most epic of his stories for her. The best storytelling – by the rules - typically did not involve the author as the main character, but somehow, Odin could pull it off. Their daughter, Ophelia, had inherited her father's particularly grandiloquent imagination. Their little son, Kana, much preferred that his mother read him illustrated storybooks about dragons.

Odin had woven stories about dragons, too, but they weren't the kind of stories that Kana liked. He'd said that he'd known good dragons and evil dragons, but he liked to tell the darkened tales the best. Corrin tried to find books for Kana where dragons were heroes, not villains, or at least were creatures that gave wise counsel.

Presently, Corrin was under the weather. She'd always been a bit sickly, that part of her nature being a part of why her Nohrian siblings took such close care of her. The ability to transform into a mighty dragon did not, unfortunately, make one immune from common colds. As Corrin sniffled and honked, her husband saw fit to entertain her in their private quarters. Thankfully, the two of them did not have to leave their sanctuary for some time – the next destination and probable battle on their agenda should negotiations fail being a thing that could wait at least a few days. Corrin had made an offering of bread to Lilith this morning in thanks for their peaceful personal realm and fortress for all of her allies. Lilith was happy for the food and told Corrin that she should go back to bed and rest.

And this is how the Nohrian princess found herself "regaled" as it was, once again by Odin's creative narrations. It was very kind of him, really it was, but his rather loud retellings made it difficult to take him seriously. She felt bad when he sometimes got such a serious look on his face when recounting some of the sadder parts of the tales. It was his imagination that made her fall in love with the man, but there were times when Corrin genuinely worried about his sanity.

Artists were meant to be strange. Corrin tried to remind herself of this as Odin was describing a blighted landscape where not even the tiniest and hardiest of flowers could grow.

"The dead rose all around the last of us, eyes in redder glow than my aching blood! And behind them rose the six dreaded scarlet lenses of the Fell Dragon's skull! The Lightbringer stood, raising her legendary sword…"

"So, you aren't the hero this time?" Corrin giggled. "That's unusual."

"This is one of my special tales, Corrin," Odin said. "This one is one of the true ones."

"I hope that this does not come as an offense," Corrin apologized, "But I find it hard to take in – some of the things you describe… or maybe just the way you describe it. The time-traveling, especially. I want to believe you, I do… it's just…"

"Please, Corrin," Odin said with an uncharacteristic gravity, "Just listen to me." He sat next to her on the bed, leaving her plenty of room to be comfortable as she lay at rest, her back propped up by pillows. He held her hand, tracing her palm and fingers. "You are free to take these tales of crimson blood and darkness deeper than the Void beyond aions in any way you wish or find needful, but let me tell them. I need to expel the black poisons of my darkened heart! And it is you whom I trust."

"Go on, then," Corrin said with sincerity, giving the sweet dork she'd somehow allowed to make children with her a warm smile.

"My eternal thanks, my twilight princess," he said, giving her hand a gentle kiss.

What had begun as entertainment for Corrin when she was ill, injured or sad became a regular part of life in the tree-house.

Odin told most of the other members of the army and the children standard faerie stories of cruel magicians overtaken by dark spirits and of katana-wielding warriors who destroyed foe and friend alike with unstoppable blood-rage until the gentle words of an ally served to change their hearts. These were tales of aching blood an unstoppable hand with a mind of its own.

The stories that he grew a troubling face over, however, were reserved for Corrin. Some of the characters in these fantastic tales grew names that were more realistic to the actual names of people than the titles that Odin had first bestowed upon them. The "Lightbringer" became Lucina – his cousin and the leader of the band of survivors in his stories of a devastated world that had all but ended. The "Cobalt Lion" became his uncle, Chrom, a prince of that far-off kingdom. The "Grim Silver Phoenix" was a person named Robin.

The tales involved time and alternate versions thereof. In one story, the hero watched his father – portrayed as an even greater hero although he'd been a common sort of man – fall by an arrow taken to spare Odin. His mother was spoken of in terms of shining gentle light, a healer of great compassion and skill. Odin mentioned that Corrin's little sister, Elise, reminded him of his mother "when he got to meet her again in younger form."

Stories of broken worlds and timelines, of setting right what once went wrong and of different kinds of resurrection were things that Corrin did not know what to make of. Her husband seemed sincere about them, yet he remained as theatric as he ever was in the telling of the narratives. Although the present war had them encountering other forms of strangeness – her own ability to transform into a dragon not being the least of them, his words seemed so wild and so impossible that she had trouble believing that he was not weaving colors over more mundane happenings. Losing one's parents to war was common enough – so perhaps the tales of their heroism in a more cosmic sort of conflict was his way of dealing with the matter. Perhaps the time-traveling part of the story was a reflection of his desire to go back and to set things right in regards to his losses.

All Corrin knew was that if the "Lucina" that Odin had spoken of was anything at all like the character in his stories in terms of kindness and courage, she would love very much to meet her someday.

There were little things about Odin that Corrin began noticing even more than ever once he began entrusting her with his "special tales." Whenever he told her how much he loved her, he tended to look slightly distracted, as if he was expecting the "dark wind that would carry him to another dimension someday" to crop up and to ruin his happiness.

When he was on the battlefield, he fought like someone who'd killed before – perhaps too many times. He did not seem to enjoy the prospect of it and spared anyone he was under Corrin's orders to spare, but he had coldness to his eyes when fighting that she knew was not a part of the "darkness" reputation that he tried to cultivate. There was an invisible weight to his shoulders that told her that he had long experience in carrying hard decisions.

There was the grim demeanor he had when dealing with wounded allies, too. He was quick to defend fallen friends on the field and could swiftly wrap a wound. He was not a healer, but knew enough of the arts of field-dressing to illicit Corrin to think that he'd had greater experience dealing with the stuff of combat than what he'd been given as her brother's retainer. He was calm when she might have panicked and seemed like he was "used to losing friends." It was actually kind of miraculous that some of them had survived the battles that they had. Odin seemed like he could accept it if they had not. He'd made some bombastic speech once about pressing on to avenge everyone should any of them succumb to their injuries.

Corrin had taken a sword to the scales once that almost ended her. She told her lover to quit his proclamations of revenge and honor because she was going to pull through and that, she did.

She caught him praying once, in words foreign to Nohrian culture and to a god different than that of her father. He'd said that it was one of the sets of prayers his father had taught him. He did not know if he would be heard or if he had any business at all in it, but it seemed to comfort him for a moment and she'd left him to it.

When the army made camp along the road heading through a mountain pass, she watched him by the campfire as he plucked up a crawling insect from the ground that had no business being the large size that it was and ate it like it wasn't anything strange. When she was appalled by this, Odin explained that the species was a perfectly edible type of locust and that he was hungry, unsure of when dinner would be done. This was something she'd expected out of Keaton, but not of any of the fully-human members of her group. At least it had gotten a laugh out of Mozu. She had foraging skills, but tended to go with gathering plants and to and to hunting and trapping wild animals.

"Oh, I've had squirrel before," Odin had said, "Those most noble gray beasts, wily and quick – but they must, too, fall to the all-encompassing darkness!"

"Yes," Mozu had said that night in camp, "but that giant bug? I thought you were a sophisticated royal retainer and you just munched that thing like you'd been starving for a week!"

Corrin hugged the girl and talk among the three of them turned to the many things that people did for the sake of survival in wildernesses. Everyone, including Odin, decided to try not to think about how often they'd caught Keaton scavenging battlefield-dead.

There were just so many little things about Odin that left Corrin thinking that he might have really survived an apocalypse – from eating anything at hand casually to the wary way he looked at the horizon.

She stepped out of the fortress' hot springs fresh and fully dressed one clear, warm evening. Corrin caught Odin sitting out on a patch of grass alone gazing up at the night sky. Both of their children had gone to bed at least an hour ago in their own quarters. A few other members of the army were milling around camp, but in the distance, doing security patrol-duty.

"Hey," Corrin said, sitting herself down beside him. "Are you reading the sky for fortunes?"

"No," Odin sighed. "I just… had a lot to think about, so I came out here."

"Ah. We all do. The path has been so difficult. I regret… not being a better leader…"

"It's not that," her husband said, wrapping an arm around her. "You're a most magnificent commander! A chosen heroine of legend! Wielder of Yato! A most glorious silver dragon! No, my love…be still! I was just thinking about something I read somewhere about how the greatest of the Deepest Midnight dark mages think that the night beyond the sun is such a deep void of eternal blackness that the stars barely shed their light upon us before they sink into eternal sleep."

"The dead shine on?"

"Time is cruel," he replied. "The light in the Void transcends time and worlds and never finds a home. It just keeps moving on through the deepness of the night forever."

"Do you feel like that, Odin?"

He fell silent.

"You aren't alone. You have all of us. You have Leo… You have me. We have our children and our friends. Whatever you have been through, you have us now."

"Odin Dark is a restless wanderer of time and space, a chosen hero without a home, my love. I may one day be called back to my homeland – or even beyond."

"Not without me, okay?" Corrin said, resting her head upon his shoulder. "Even if it is outside of known space and time… even if Odin Dark once again finds himself in a blighted landscape ruled by a world-eating ancient god, I'll be at your side and in your heart. I promise."

"The Wanderer may not be given a choice."

"I'll be your home, Odin, wherever home is."

"Your love is a pyre upon which I burn."

END.

Shadsie, 2016.

I just finished Fates/Conquest, playing it furious long-sessions while ill – and I wrote this story in the span of a day in bed. I actually don't have the penultimate bond between the avatar and Odin yet on my game although I finished the main game story, so I wrote this from a mid-game perspective. Eventually, I will have to play the other paths. I hope that this was a decent offering for the Fates section. And, why yes, the title of this is a reference to mythology.