This whole story is inspired by the Dutch title for Defying Gravity, and at first it was going to be an Aversa/Fem!Robin story till I realized I had no idea what I planned to do with it, so instead it's just Aversa, one of my favorite characters.
"I'd sooner buy defying gravity. Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity. And you can't bring me down."
Defying Gravity, Wicked
For a very long time, she'd felt like she'd been born to fly. That had been the only thing that had made sense for all of her life, from when she was a little girl and Validar had introduced her to a lost pegasus from Ylisse, that she only fit in the sky.
That was still true, even with the way that the world had changed completely around her and now she willingly followed Chrom to whatever end he asked, along with the tactician at his side.
She knew that technically Robin would be like a sister to her, but she felt no connection of the sort to her. While she couldn't really blame her for hating Validar and having dispatched him, they had absolutely no relationship.
It didn't help that no one else in the army was inclined to spend time with her, and she didn't want to figure out why Robin had taken an interest. Which was why the second that she found out they wouldn't be marching on that day, she'd saddled up Ariel and taken to the skies.
Lost between the clouds and the earth far below, the wind blew away all the thoughts and confusions as they danced in the sky. Here, nothing could touch her, not wind magic nor arrows to the heart. Below, the tents scattered in the Feroxian field looked like little tiny flowers against a great sea of green grass just tinged with yellow at the tips. Far up on the mountains separating the great country from the rest of the continent, the mountains were heralding autumn already in patches of red and gold as the leaves turned early.
Aversa stroked her pegasus's neck as they circled around again and the currents of air blew her bangs straight out behind her. There was nothing to fear here. Nothing could pull her back to earth without it being of her own accord.
Far, far below, she could see the other winged riders taking flight as well, relishing one of the last perfect days before autumn would ground them more days than not. Only the three other pegasus knights had anywhere near the skill she did, and two of them spent so much time tripping over their own feet that she had no idea how they got anywhere.
Ariel nickered under her as they dodged a wisp of cloud, the cold tendrils disappating against her cheek on contact and she stroked her neck again before indicating that they should fly down a little. One of the wonderful things about them having flown together for as long as she could remember learning to fly was that they needed no special commands or even talking between them. A shift in her position and Ariel would respond like they were of one mind. More than once, the pegasus had saved both their lives by reacting to things she hadn't seen.
The pegasus flapped her wings once powerfully before going into a spiral, black feathers fluttering madly as the air resisted them, and Aversa automatically responded to the friction by holding on tighter with her legs and letting the reins go slack in her hands so that if Ariel needed to shift, she wasn't trapped in that position. They twirled down steadily like a tornado, straight towards the ground till it seemed like they were about to be caught by the earth before soaring up again, sending a storm of leaves falling to the ground.
Aversa couldn't help laughing in exhilaration as the pegasus climbed back to the sky, gravity losing its binds on them. Oh, no one else understood that strength. They all thought her gifts lay in her appearance and her ability to use dark magic without it corrupting her, but truly it lay in the way that she could always defy gravity and claim the skies with the only companion she could trust with her life. It was the freest anyone could be.
Ariel slowed them into a gradual climb after they passed all the other fliers again, spreading her wings out to catch the waves in the air so that she could rest without landing. Aversa patted her neck again as she looked out over the world spreading under them. Only the geese flying south to Plegia and Ylisse came up as high as they did, drawing curious patterns together and honking at her as they passed by. Behind them followed the scent of clean air and rain, blown at them from the clouds that wouldn't reach the army for another half day if the winds held up like this. The sunset would be lost behind the heavy clouds.
Robin had asked her back when she joined what she planned to do when the war was over. She still didn't have an answer, same as the younger woman, though for different reasons. The things she thought she had understood had turned out to be fantasies and fabrications, the truths she'd taken for granted were all grey at best and her morality corrupted by a man who wished to destroy the world. It would have been so easy to pin all the blame on Validar, and a weaker woman might have.
But she wasn't weak, and she knew that it only had so much to do with the man she had once thought of as her father, that she had grown up and chosen to keep believing her fantasies because she didn't want to imagine her savior as being wrong. So many years lost to something that turned out to not matter anymore.
Ariel was making all the decisions for them in the flying now, giving her the space to think. After so many years, the pegasus knew the difference between flights for fun, flights to fight, and flights to think, and that this was one of the latter. All she had to do was shift her weight slightly with each turn and keep her hands on the reins. A part of her wished that she could do just that for however long it took her to decide, though even Ariel would tire long before all of her doubts and fears had been assauged. A larger part of her said that was just like running away.
She sighed and looked at the clouds massing on the horizon like a massive army in purple and black. Undoubtedly Robin would love the storm and no one else. The last storm they'd been caught in, she'd caught the woman playing in the rain and laughing gleefully at every flash of lightning no matter how close it came to her.
They probably weren't all that different at the core, though she wasn't ready yet to let the other woman in any closer than she was. But her persistence in learning who she was had held out even against the most nasty things she could think of to say and that had made her stop saying them. Robin at least had decided what she was doing for the time being, and had told her once that she was leaving the future for the future because right now, there was no time for looking far off.
Perhaps she was right, and the only answer for what kind of future she could seek was to wait and find it after the war, when everyone returned home to create a peace that none of the countries had known for a very long time. Whatever the answer, she didn't have it yet. And she didn't have forever to go and find it.
But for now, she was content to let it wait, and to laugh at gravity should it try to pin her down before she was ready.
They were born to fly.