Sleep of the Just

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

Warnings: No pairings that aren't possible in the canon game endings. If you're looking for Innes and Ephraim to get it on, this is not the story you're looking for. Fans of Ephraim, take note- this is from the perspective of Innes. You may not like what you see... but take it all with a shaker of Frelian sea salt.

Prologue

"I yield. Forgive me, Eirika. I am not worthy of your hand."

Pebbles ground into his knees, and the silvered tip of a lance-head rested at his throat, but Innes of Frelia felt no fear. The face of his enemy showed neither bloodlust nor calculation, only a puzzled sort of exasperation. Innes kept his own face composed and looked up with a steady gaze into Ephraim's sharp blue eyes. The drama of the moment was perfect, until Ephraim wiped the perspiration from his face in a gesture both unbecoming and coarse.

"Get up, you fool," he muttered.

Innes remained on his knees; it was only when Eirika herself stepped down from the royal box and took his hand that he allowed himself to rise. Eirika then joined hands with her brother as well, and they stood on the field with Eirika as the bridge between them. The spectators responded with cheers and applause for this show of grace from the princess of Renais. Innes forced himself to smile at the wavering banners that fluttered from each tier of the stands; he could not look at the blurred faces of the crowd, nor could he stand to gaze another moment upon Ephraim. He kept focused on Eirika; she gave him a look that was not regretful, but neither could it be called scornful. Nor was it pitying. There seemed to be a question in her eyes that Innes could not and would not answer.

Innes retired to his room within Mulan Castle, where the stout walls of the border post shut out the spectators' useless clamor. He closed the door in his own sister's face, but he'd asked Tana repeatedly not to follow him. Innes seated himself in the carved chair the Frelian garrison had provided their prince, grasped the armrests with shaking hands, and stared at a point of nothingness well short of the opposite wall. He didn't feel like someone whose aspirations had been shattered; rather, he felt like someone who had fallen from a great height only to be caught by some invisible hand when mere feet above the ground. The great plunge had happened, but he had a moment to pause and reflect before being dashed upon the earth.

"It worked," he whispered to himself. "Everything worked as planned. This was a triumph."

And yet, there remained a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

-x-

Innes found his violent infatuation for the Renaitian princess to be a passing affliction; once they were no longer in proximity on a daily basis the spell on his heart was broken and Innes came to his senses. The epiphany did not come all at once, as a thunderburst; rather, it stole over him like a creeping shadow, tainting his days with an apprehension he never had felt before, even in the rathole of Carcino when hope of survival seemed a fool's bauble. Finally he woke one night drenched in his own fear and realized that he had committed an error that was, in its way, as grave as any misjudgment in the heat of battle. Innes, who took such pride in the stream of information that flowed around him and allowed him to categorize the world in brief statements of fact, to separate the good from the base, the useful from the wretched- Innes had been blind to a part of himself, that called itself Love but in truth was Delusion. And he had, loudly and emphatically, committed himself to Delusion.

Yet Innes could not go back on his word, not after his confession to Eirika on the eve of their victory over the Demon King. As the day of his promised duel with Ephraim drew near, Innes spent long hours each night turning the dilemma over in his mind. He could best the prince of Renais, take Eirika as his wife, and glory in his public humiliation of Ephraim. He did not love Eirika, but he was fond of her, and the alliance would please both Renais and Frelia. Yet, as he reflected on his conversation with Eirika in the Darkling Woods, he remembered the shock in her face as he spoke, and he realized that her words were not those of a woman in love. He might not love Eirika, but neither did she carry any ardor for him.

Once this sunk in, Innes fancied that he might, upon defeating Ephraim, nobly allow his hard-won bride to choose her own destiny. That carried its own risks, though. Innes might find, in the heat of victory, that he could not carry through with his plan. His heart had fooled him once already, in the months leading up to that moment in the Darkling Woods, and he could not trust it. And Eirika, upon seeing the clear superiority of Innes to her brother, might well decide that she did find him an attractive proposition. By the time either of them repented of their haste, the papers would be signed and the marriage formally sealed.

The most appropriate strategy was the simplest: Innes could deliberately lose the duel to break his claim on Eirika's affections and thus end his suit without casting poor light upon the lady's honor. So, while Ephraim asked for their duel to be a saber match, in which neither had a clear advantage, Innes made a great show of insisting that the weapon of choice be the lance. To best the greatest lancer in Renais with his own weapon would have been a sweet triumph indeed, but Innes's request tilted the odds so that Ephraim would have to try to lose. And since Ephraim would likely not have the sensitivity to do so, even if he believed Innes to be truly enamored of Eirika, Innes would simply have to put forth a good effort to obtain his convincing defeat.

True to form, Ephraim on the dueling ground conducted himself as though this were merely another one of their matches from days gone by, as if a man's future happiness were not on the line. Too graceless to throw the match in Innes's favor, too obtuse to sense any of the turmoil in his opponent's mind, Ephraim entered the fray like the overgrown puppy he was. It was only when Innes began to falter that a slightly sickened look crossed Ephraim's face, as though he didn't understand why either of them were doing this. Of course, he did not understand.

Innes placed his bets correctly; Ephraim might be a hard man to forgive, but he was a woefully easy man to play. Eirika, infinitely more complex than her lout of a brother, was not so predictable, and Innes felt he could trust her tangled emotions as little as he trusted his own. But Ephraim... he performed perfectly in the role Innes had assigned him. The victor's role. Innes raked his fingernails on the varnished wood of his chair. He had prepared mentally for the duel like a man readying himself for execution- or for suicide. Which, in a sense, it had been. When he emerged from his room, Innes of Frelia would no longer be what he was, or what he wanted to be. Innes would be, publicly and forever, the lesser man.

That it had been by his own choice was but a small comfort. Innes doubted a suicide enjoyed the moment of his death any better.

End Prologue

Well, here's my first foray into the world of Magvel. Many thanks to my beta, Writer Awakened! Anyway, this is the beginning of a three-part postwar slice of political intrigue, featuring Innes working with (and against) Ephraim to piece Magvel back together.