The Generic Lords' Club
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
A crackfic mashup retooled as a "fill" for what you might call the "Eliwood in Leather Pants" theme. Featuring drinking, semi-nudity, death, necromancy, Hector/Lyn and Eliwood/Lyn.
At the Generic Lords' Club, it was always four in the afternoon and always raining. The former meant that it was perpetually teatime, which suited Eliwood; the latter meant that there was never any incentive to leave and go practice lordly things like dueling, which disgruntled Ephraim. This meant that Ephraim was, after more than five years of loitering in the rose-strewn tea room, rather spoiling for a duel with somebody.
Anybody.
Present company included.
"I don't trust the new kid," Ephraim was saying of the youth who had arrived at the door of the club one day and announced himself a member. "He can't be one of us. He doesn't show any regard for the lives of his men."
Privately, Eliwood agreed that the newcomer also played dirty chess. Pawn sacrifice always left such a bad taste in Eliwood's mouth when he saw that tactic employed.
"You have to lose old friends to make new ones. What kind of a philosophy is that?" Ephraim narrowed his eyes and dropped his voice down to a harsh whisper. "Also, I understand that his sister... is a necromancer."
Eliwood blinked.
"Yes. She raises people from the dead. Successfully. Eliwood, this kid can't possibly be one of us."
Eliwood stared down the hallway; the subject of their conversation liked to spend most of his time alone, in the club's modest reading room. Eliwood had found it an innocent enough pastime... until now. He had probably better check to see that there weren't any dark volumes on Stealing Quintessence or necromancy sitting on the rosewood shelves...
The door to the reading room swung outward as Eliwood contemplated the possible threat in their midst. Down the hallway came a fairly ordinary-looking boy of about sixteen, neither terribly tall nor imposing in any other sense, someone whose defining attribute was the gold circlet perched upon his head.
"Hello, Marth," said Ephraim in tones that didn't quite suit polite conversation. "How many of your own troops have you slaughtered lately?"
"Hello, Ephraim," Marth replied, as though this were a normal exchange wherever he came from.
"That cat-eyed swordmistress with the funny accent... was she really worth that many lives?"
"I have no idea what in the world you're talking about," Marth replied, and he set his jaw in a way that indicated that, if Ephraim was spoiling for a fight, he was going to get one.
"Where are you going, Marth? It's still raining out," interjected Eliwood.
"I'm going to see my sister."
"By all means," said Ephraim, and he rose from his chair. "I think I'll go visit mine. I'm sure she's off doing something useful, like helping people, and not channeling demonic spirits to unholy purpose."
Ephraim donned his lordly mantle and stalked off in the direction of the exit.
"I hate this place," Marth stated to no one in particular, and he walked quite deliberately in the opposite direction.
Eliwood, left alone in the tearoom with its bud vases and crocheted doilies, pondered what it even meant to be a Generic Lord. Why was it that he was fated to linger here, instead of being placed among the Lords of Badass with his old comrades Lyn and Hector? What made a generic Lord so very... generic? Generic Lords were all of noble birth, but so were most Badass Lords. Generic Lords tended to use the rapier in combat, but then why was the lance-using Ephraim among them rather than his sword-fighting twin Eirika? Were he in a charitable mood, Eliwood might have said that the essence of "generic" lordhood was that combination of nobility of spirit, compassion, sensitivity, graciousness, and resolve that made a lord... well, a Lord. But the more Eliwood thought about it, the more all those attributes only made sense when applied to him, and not to his... friends.
The more he thought about it, the more this concept of generic lordhood was like a very bad joke, and he was that joke's victim.
Eliwood pushed back his chair and murmured his thanks to the unseen bodies that kept tea on the table. He was going to have a look at that reading room.
-x-
Across the street, the enclave known as the Lords of Badass was having a wild party. Rather, Hector and Lyn were having a wild party; Sigurd and Ike didn't do such things, and they were having a manly conversation about manly things while Hector and Lyn did Jello Shots and divested themselves of many articles of clothing. Everyone was having a grand time, in his or her own way, when there came a knock at the door. Hector, happy to entertain another guest, staggered to the door half-clad to invite the visitor in.
"What the..." said the Axe Lord of Ostia.
There stood a young man with hair like fire; his slim body was encased in garments of sleek black leather, set off by the scarlet lining of his sable mantle. One black-gloved hand rested on the hilt of a sword that was most definitely not a genteel rapier. Its blade was crafted of razor-sharp obsidian and fiery gems glowed at its pommel.
"Who the hell are you?" asked Hector.
The figure on the doorstep emitted a dark chuckle.
"Don't you recognize me, friend? I am your companion, Eliwood of Pherae, and I have taken a level-up in badass."
Lyn poked her pretty head around Hector's massive shoulder.
"Eliwood, what on earth have you done to yourself?"
"I have made myself a man worthy of you, Lyndis," said the newly badass Eliwood, and his blue eyes took on a glint of something very definitely not of earth, nor of anything good.
"Eliwood, I don't-"
That was as far as she got, for Badass!Eliwood plunged his obsidian blade into Hector's stout chest, and Lyn's sentence terminated in a shriek as she was drenched in the bright blood of her lover. Eliwood planted his foot upon Hector's warm corpse and cleaned his dark blade on what remained of Hector's clothing. By this point, Lyn had drawn the Mani Katti, but Badass!Eliwood nimbly knocked the blade from her hand. He grasped Lyn by the wrist, and at his touch, Lyn seemed to... transform. The vengeful gleam in her eyes simply went out.
"Oh, Eliwood. You're so magnificent."
So it was that Eliwood of Pherae took his place among the fabled Lords of Badass, even though after that no one really wanted to hang out with him. As for the slain Hector, he was raised from the dead by Marth's necromancer sister, and he and Ephraim became BFFs, said screw the Lord business, and went off to be mercenaries together. As for Marth, he in turn became BFFs with Eliwood's son Roy, who had previously gone unnoticed because he was the most generic Generic Lord to ever lift a rapier. Mind you, Roy really didn't seem to be the offspring of Badass!Eliwood and his lover Lyndis, so nobody was really sure where he came from, but that's a conundrum for another day.
The End