Fire Emblem: Awakening, Gerome/Inigo/Lucina: bad end AU - all they have is each other
As another Risen fell to the ground and evaporated into dust, he wondered what the point was anymore. They were never going to go away, they'd never be able to stop Grima with their numbers cut down to almost nothing, and even if by some miracle they did it wouldn't bring back the people they'd lost.
Inigo sighed as he knelt next to the shabby grave markers. Owain. Caught off guard and lanced through the chest before he even had a chance to strike. Kjelle. Her armor could protect her from everything except the strongest magic. Yarne. His worst fear had come true, the Taguel race was no more. Cynthia. Taken down by a surprise arrow. You all tried so hard, and in the end it didn't even matter.
"I miss them too." Lucina put a hand on his shoulder. "Inigo...we can't-"
"They wouldn't have wanted us to, I know," he said. "But twelve of us, Luce, twelve, we...after all that..." He shook his head angrily. "A squalid hellhole, a wasteland...no, worse. At least a wasteland wouldn't have Risen everywhere." He bit his lip, choking back tears. "Owain shouldn't have died that way, Lucina, I told him to run. I told him not to throw away his life!"
"And Cynthia." Lucina shuddered, obviously fighting back tears of her own. "My baby sister...I told her not to try to be a hero, just this once. I promised I'd protect her..." She traced the grave marker. "I failed her, Inigo. We failed everyone."
"Don't say that." Inigo tried to force a smile, but he knew even his best efforts were hollow now. "They wouldn't want that. Cynthia wouldn't want her big sister to feel bad, she knows you tried," he said.
"She shouldn't have been the one protecting me!" Lucina protested. "I promised Mother and Father that if anything happened to them I'd protect her, it shouldn't have been the other way around!"
"Luce-"
"What was the point of even going back? We couldn't change anything, even with Naga's help all we did was prolong the inevitable," she went on. "Destiny still won."
"Lucina, we can't-" He swallowed, tears gathering in his eyes. "We can't blame ourselves, we did everything we could. I-it's not our fault Grima managed to get past Robin's sacrifice." Robin, the tactician and Chrom's most trusted friend, had taken a fatal blow meant for the Exalt in order to spare them her possible forced betrayal, but all she'd succeeded in doing was giving Grima a clear opening. Her existence, her determination had been the thing holding Grima back and when she died, he'd simply found a new vessel in her and Gaius's son. "And it's not Morgan's fault, either. He...he wasn't strong enough to..."
"It's our fault." Lucina clenched her fists, shoulders shaking as she continued to fight back tears. "Gerome was right, Inigo. You can't change the past, destiny always has its way."
"I didn't want to be right." Inigo looked up; Gerome stood behind them, his mask cast aside and pain evident on his face. "This time I wanted something to prove me wrong. I wanted to hope..." He looked away. "But this time I couldn't even save Minerva." Minerva, too, had given her life to protect her master and perished in the flames of war, and Gerome hadn't been the same since. Inigo stood up, brushing the dirt from his knees and embracing his friend.
"Damn it, we can't-" His breath hitched. "We can't keep thinking like this! Not now, not when all we have is each other! We were lucky to escape with our lives after all that, even if we're living in a hellhole...they wouldn't want us to give in to despair!"
"But what's the point?!" Gerome cried, he'd never shown this much emotion before. "With the world like this it's only a matter of time before we're food for the crows too!"
"No." Lucina shook her head and moved to join them. "I...I don't want to die. I don't see how we can live now, but I want to. Somehow, I just want to."
"What for, though?" Gerome asked. "We three alone can't stop Grima, and we can't alter the past again. Naga's power can only help us so much, and if we try we may just get the same result."
"You almost sounded like Laurent," Lucina laughed bitterly, burying her face in his shoulder. Inigo wrapped an arm around her waist as Gerome's moved to embrace them both.
"We need to live," he said. "We have to keep going for as long as we can. For their sake, and for ours. Even if all we're doing is delaying our deaths, the longer we can do so the better." It had always been like that, Gerome was always the mature one of their trio. Lucina, before she'd become so serious, was just as flighty as the other kids and Inigo had been a shy little thing trying too hard not to be shy. But they'd just been together, all three of them. Friends. Brothers and sister in arms. Perhaps more.
They were each other's whole world now, for better or for worse.
"From now on," he said, "let's only be ourselves. No hiding our feelings, no pretending to be something we're not."
"I agree," Lucina said, taking his free hand. "And we'll always take care of and protect each other. If we're risking our lives, we do it as a team."
"Just like we always should have done," Gerome added, before the others died, back when anything seemed possible. He didn't say it but Inigo knew he meant it.
They stood there in that embrace for a long time, until the sun set and they went to find a safe spot to rest for the night. Or as safe as possible in a world full of Risen. Tomorrow they would go on the run again, fighting anything that stood in their way and dodging death's cold embrace for at least another day.
Nothing would ever truly be okay again, not the way it was before, but they would never lose what little hope they had left.