Author's Note: This is my first attempt at any AU fic. Ever. So let's hope that I can manage to pull it off! Constructive criticism is appreciated a lot more than "I liked it" or even "This is the best fan fiction I've ever read". Really.
Pairings are not listed, because they are subject to change. Any polite requests may be taken into account, unless they are for couples that I utterly despise, including Eliwood/Ninian and Rath/Lyn. Also, ages are apt to be incorrect, but I had to put most of these kids in one High School. I couldn't do it all correctly.
Disclaimer: I don't own Fire Emblem, because if I did, I'd translate all of the games into English for us poor, selfish, English-speaking Americans to read. However, I do own a mini fridge.
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Fiora had woken up with the delightful realization that today, of all days, she was finally a High School senior. She could wear a letter jacket without looking stupid, would get to buy a ridiculously overpriced dress for prom, and could finally, finally be elected as the head photographer for the school newspaper.
She had her clothes laid out from the night before, and grabbed them upon awakening. She would have to fight for the bathroom, she knew. Farina spent more time on her hair and makeup than Fiora spent on most of her math homework.
It took only a matter of seconds to pull on her jeans and Princeton T-Shirt, sneakers following close behind. Farina had tried to tell her last night that it was bad luck to wear a shirt to a college that you hadn't been accepted to yet, but Fiora rather liked the shirt. Plus, she did want to go to Princeton. Her grades were good enough, as were her SAT and SAT-II scores. It was just a matter of the essay.
It was a quick trip downstairs, with a kiss to her mother and the subsequent receiving of a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. Florina, already dressed, was sitting at the table, eating from a similar bowl, filled with the same things.
Sitting down, Fiora realized that Florina was dressed in her usual fashion. Fiora had never been one for dresses, but Florina loved frilly skirts that went past her knees, and long-sleeved pastel shirts. "You look cute, Flor," Fiora said with a grin. "Do you want me to do your hair? Pull back a little of it?"
The lavender-haired girl smiled and nodded. "With my new silver barrettes?" she asked, eyes wide with delight.
"However you want it," Fiora replied, shoving one last spoonful of Honey Nut Cheerios in her mouth. "Come on, let's go."
When the reached the bathroom, Farina was leaned over the sink, eyeliner in one hand as she deftly applied the heavy makeup. Fiora sighed. "Farina, just let me grab a brush, will you? I'm doing Florina's hair."
Farina sighed, then grabbed a brush and tossed it to Fiora, who deftly caught it. "We'll do it in my room."
Florina sat utterly still as her older sister gently brushed out her hair and caught a small section of it in the barrette. "Are you nervous?" Fiora asked.
"A little," the younger girl replied candidly, regarding her sister's handiwork with a smile. "It looks really pretty. There's going to be so many people."
The aqua-haired girl laughed at her younger sister's sudden change of thought. "It does look pretty, and yes, there will be lots of people. But it'll be okay. You'll still have your friends from junior high there with you."
Fiora knew full and well that Florina really didn't have any friends from junior high. So many people ignored her little sister, as her shy nature kept her from meeting most of her classmates. There was that girl in Farina's grade, from the stable, that Florina went out with sometimes to the movies, or riding. Lyndis. She was a nice girl, but would she really want to hang out with a Freshman in school? "Just remember to-"
"WHO ate MY last poptart?" Farina cried, bursting in on her two sisters, reddened face clashing sharply with her light blue tank top.. "Someone ate the last strawberry pop-tart! Who did it? 'Fess up, Fiora!"
The eldest girl shrugged. "Florina and I both had Cheerios, so don't look at us. I don't see why you eat those things, anyways."
"Because I can take them in the car!" Farina explained, rolling her eyes. "And now I don't have anything to eat on the way?
"We covered this already. You are not eating in my Tacoma. That is three summers and countless weekends worth of work for me," Fiora replied. "When you get your own car, you can eat as much as you like in it, and never vacuum it out."
The dark-haired girl groaned and ran a hand through her hair, which she'd spent several minutes perfecting. "Fine. I'll get something out of the vending machines when I get to school. A pop-tart."
"That sounds excellent." Fiora gave her youngest sister a long grin. "Come on, Florina. Get your stuff. It's time to go."
It was no easy matter loading the three girls into the Tacoma. Farina insisted that Florina couldn't sit in the middle seat, because it made them look idiotic. Fiora felt that Farina didn't want to be seen with her little sister, but eventually decided that it was more sensible for Florina to sit in one of the small, sideways-facing chairs in the back seat.
Florina was utterly silent in the back seat, her arms wrapped tightly around her brand new backpack. "It's not that bad, I promise," Fiora reassured her little sister once they pulled onto the main road, smiling at her in the rearview mirror. "I'll take you to get your schedule, and if you get lost, just go into a bathroom and call me on my cell. I'll come and find you."
"Ah, Florina's a freshman," Farina added happily, reaching up to run a hand through her short, dark blue hair, an impish grin on her face. "Florina's fresh meat. Isn't it amazing how they sound the same?"
Fiora took her eyes from the road just long enough to give her younger sister a glare, then immediately turned her gaze back to the traffic. "Florina, it's not that bad. You've been in the school with me before, when you visited the photojournalism lab, and you were fine. And you have your cell, right?"
The youngest of the trio nodded shakily. "Uh-huh," she half-whispered. "In my pocket."
"Remember, Flor', don't let any of the teachers see on it. Some of them will take it up in a flash," Fiora reminded her. She was talking more to fill the silence than to actually convey anything to her younger sister. After all, Fiora had made it through her freshman year with no help, and she Farina hadn't wanted any advice. But Florina was not either of her older sisters, and she would need help.
Hanging a left on San Elimine, Fiora tried to turn her mind from her younger sister's potential problems. The traffic was a mess. The high school was immediately off the side street of San Elimine, and when thirty-five hundred kids were all trying to get onto that street, paying attention was pretty much necessary.
"Just hope that you don't get Coach Vaida for P.E.," Farina remarked with a smug grin. "She's harsh. But oh, wait. She teaches all of the freshmen girl's gym classes."
There was a loud whimper from the back seat, and Fior acouldn't help it any longer. "Shut it, Farina!" she snapped, whirling to give the middle sister a long, intense glare. "Coach Vaida's fine. Besides, Florina only has to take gym for two years. And she'll be good at it, too."
"Of course she will," Farina replied with breezy confidence, which only frustrated Fiora more. How could her sister be so insensitive about the whole thing? Florina was not going to do well in high school, were there were probably ten times the amount of people at her junior high. Not to mention lots of boys that she didn't know, which wouldn't go well. "When she tells coach Vaida that she's the soccer star's little sister, everything will be just fine," Farina continued. "Just don't embarrass the family name, Flor."
A small red sportscar immediately behind them was honking madly. Fiora realized with a start that she hadn't moved at all, and there was a large space in front of her in line. "Whoops," she muttered, releasing the brake and coasting forward as the sportscar honked again.
Farina began to roll down her window with a livid expression, and Fiora groaned. This could only lead to bad, bad things. "Farina, get your head back in the car right now!" she commanded as her younger sister stuck her head out the window.
"Jerks!" Farina yelled, unbuckling her seatbelt so as to turn and glare at the offending drivers. "Idiots! We're having a moment here! Wait your turn!"
Fiora thumbed the control on her armrest, and watched with some childish delight as Farina struggled to pull her head back in the car as the window rolled up. "You shouldn't have done that!" the dark haired girl snapped with a frown and a glare.
The eldest girl shrugged, pushing a few strands of aqua hair out of her eyes. "I told you not to stick your head out of my car window," she said as means of explanation. "It's my car. If you don't want to behave like a normal civilized human being, then you can find another ride to school. And to the horse barn, come to think of it."
Farina mumbled something intelligible, but Fiora didn't mind. She took another glance in her mirror at Florina, who was still sitting with her arms latched about her backpack, eyes wide as she risked a tentative look behind them at the offending red sports car.
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Normally, Hector didn't like to honk his horn. But this was a very, very special day.
Things had proceeded from bad to wonderful to horrendous. But, that was the way that things worked in the Axel family. When your only caretaker was a twenty-eight-year-old who worked as a scuzzy, if very successful and wealthy, lawyer, and your parents had left behind more money than you knew what to do with- well, almost more money than Hector knew what to do with- then you were pretty much destined to be riding life's rollercoaster.
It had started out with the sudden realization that today was the first day of his senior year. Awful. Being on the starting defense of the varsity football team would help out with that, certainly, but still. School. Who needed grades when they knew that Ivy League colleges would be pounding down their doors in a few short months, just to have you play football? When some colleges had already started?
But Uther tossing him a pair of keys had helped oh-so-much. "Won a big case yesterday," his older brother said with a shrug. "Thought that we should celebrate, it being your senior year and all. Mom and Dad got me a Viper for my senior year."
"As long as it's not your Viper," Hector replied. "I don't want something that's been totaled, thanks very much."
His older brother had rolled his eyes, and jerked his head towards the front door. It had been a Corvette. And not a new one, either. A sixty-four red Corvette, fully restored, and the new love of Hector's life.
"It's got two seats," Uther had remarked, and Hector had found himself confused by that obvious statement. "Which means you need someone else to fill that seat."
Hector had wanted to tell him that Eliwood, his long-time best friend, already had a truck, and wouldn't need a ride. Then he knew what his brother was talking about.
Erk.
Even the kid's name sounded annoying. He'd come to live with that odd family over the summer, who Hector had the odd feeling were foreign. They spoke perfect English, but they didn't seem to have jobs, and they were filthy rich. Definitely foreign spies, or something of the like.
And now, he was giving the purple-haired bookworm shrimp a ride to school. Hector had tried to be polite. After all, he'd just gotten his new car, he was going to be a senior--maybe the kid needed some help. He was, what, a sophomore? He hadn't been at Insigina High yet, though. But Erk had shrugged off all of his attempts to help, and kept his nose buried in some book. Hector had asked him what it was.
"Tess of the D'Urbervilles," Erk replied. What the hell was a Durburvil, anyway? "Not particularly academic, as there are no concepts to be taken of it, but it is a tragic realistic novel, written by one of the best authors of his time period."
Hector couldn't quite keep the blank look off his face.
"Thomas Hardy," Erk had replied. And then the kid had rolled his eyes at him! "One of the greatest novelists of all time, in my opinion. Perhaps next to Alexander Dumas and the more present Orson Scott Card. Throw in George R.R. Martin for good measure on the fantasy, I suppose."
What the hell was the kid talking about?
So when a little gray Toyota Tacoma stopped in front of him in the parking lot, not moving for several seconds, Hector laid on the horn. Erk jumped in surprise, his gaze ripped from his book for a few seconds. Hector didn't know why, but it gave him complete satisfaction. So when the boy lowered his gaze to his book, Hector again pounded on the horn.
"Jerks!"
Who was calling him a jerk? He wasn't holding up traffic, wasn't ignoring the people who were kind enough to transport him places in their brand new, fully restored Corvettes.
"Idiots!"
Ah, it was the girl from the Tacoma. She had her head out the window, and Hector immediately recognized the shock of dark-blue hair. Oh, God, he was not prepared to mess with Farina Pearson today. She was a junior this year, a very athletic- and, he didn't want to admit it, good-looking- girl, and not the sort that one wanted to carry on a conversation with.
Hector tried to lower his six-foot-two frame, and cleared his throat softly. Erk glanced up, gave him an annoyed glance, and returned to his Durbur-wurbur-vurbur book.
When the Tacoma took a left, into the less-crowded area of the parking lot, Hector continued on, determined to find a parking spot as far away from them as possible.
He finally sighted one, and pulled in next to a little green Saturn, from which a pretty girl in pigtails was emerging. "Cute, huh?" he asked Erk, then immediately regretted his words when the boy turned to regard him with a lazy stare.
"I suppose," Erk replied. "Although I don't find that I have time for girls. Most of them are terribly annoying, anyways."
Crap, the kid wasn't gay, was he? No, surely not. Just weird. "Girls will always be annoying," Hector intoned wisely. "But there will be a time when not having one is even more annoying than putting up with one. You'll take the plunge, buddy. I promise."
Erk frowned, swinging his backpack over one shoulder, Tess of the D'Urbervilles still clenched tightly in his hand. "In the book I'm reading, Thomas Hardy portrays love as something that does not work, unless both parties are completely pure and innocent, and able to commit fully to one another. Tess allows herself to be wooed by a man, and as a result, has a child out of wedlock, is betrayed by a man that she falls in love with years later, and is eventually killed. She loved Angel with all her heart, but that did not stop her from being killed for her sins. Her younger sister, though, is 'allowed' by the fates to fall in love with, and presumably marry, Angel, because even Tess says that she is all of the good, with none of the bad."
Hector scowled as Erk strode towards the main campus. He hadn't even said "thank you". Or, for that matter, spoken one coherent sentence the entire ride over there. What the crap was all of that love stuff about, anyways? Hector wasn't talking about love. He was talking about dating, and getting some action while he was at it.
Well, then. The boy could walk home, if he had that attitude. No one had asked Hector to take him home in the first place.
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A/N: Sorry that the first scene seemed to drag a little bit. I really wanted to establish a little of the dynamic between the three sisters. Following scenes will be longer, but better written.
And naming the street San Elimine came from the concept that the street my high school was on was called San Augustine. Thought that it fit the FE theme nicely.