This short piece takes place early in Conquest, but contains late Birthright spoilers.
If you're still here, I assume that means you already know what happens near the end of Birthright. Well, either that or you just guessed. Despite my efforts to be careful in the title and summary, it's probably easy to see coming (and dread).
As someone who played Birthright first, it felt pretty eerie when I later played Conquest. Like leading an army of ghosts. I know they're different universes but it still felt like people had come back to life, inexplicably aiding someone who'd once been against them.
Anyway, as always, thank you for reading.
Revenant's Apology
"Big brotheeerrr!" Elise's voice rings out a moment before she opens the door, stepping into Corrin's treehouse. One second in and she's already sparkling with energy. "I'm here! I'm so happy you invited me over. What will we do today? Want to play a game?"
Corrin is sitting at the little round table, in one of the two chairs. A part of his mind reminds him to stand up, but this notion is quickly silenced by the weariness in his bones. What does it matter, anyway? Elise has never been a stickler for etiquette.
"I didn't have a specific idea in mind," he replies, cracking a smile at her. "Maybe we'll play freeze tag? We did that last time you were here. Ah, um, on second thought, maybe we can just sit and chat today. Look, Felicia brought tea all the way to this table without dropping anything! I'm so proud of her."
He was hoping that Elise might, at least, chuckle at his weak attempt at humor. Instead, she seems to disregard everything he said. At the sight of him, surprise flashes across her face, followed by a furrowed brow. "Whoa, big brother, you should've told me this was a medical call. I didn't think I'd need to bring my staff. I better go and get it!"
"Wait!" He makes her pause. "I'm fine, Elise."
"No, you're not! Look at those bags under your eyes! Oh, I guess you can't look at your own eyes, but –"
"I'm fine," he repeats, putting more weight into the words this time. "Really. I'm not ill. I guess I could use more sleep, but who couldn't, in this army? Anyway, if you don't mind, could you sit with me? There's something I want to talk to you about."
For a few tense moments, her mouth remains in a stubborn frown, reminding Corrin quite strikingly of Xander. But then her expression clears and she takes the other seat at the table, apparently having decided to indulge his request for the time being. "Is it about Father's latest mission? It sure must be tiring for you. He's basically made you run around and do one thing after another, ever since you returned from Hoshido."
"Yeah, it's true that our missions weigh on my mind, but –"
"Don't worry! You'll always have me for backup." In the blink of an eye, her famed cheerfulness is switched on, causing the room to seem a bit brighter. "If you get injured because you're sleepwalking on the battlefield, I'll be there to patch you up."
"Thank you, Elise. I can always count on you. But that's actually not what I meant to talk about today –"
"Then what did you want to talk about?"
"I'm getting to it." And he is. But this is hard for him to say. He rehearsed the words before she came in but now they're getting lost in his head, being carried away by the wind, and he struggles to find them again. It's hard for him to run after them when a heavy feeling sits in his chest, and has been sitting there for days already. It's hard for him to even look at his little sister directly. His gaze has fallen to the tabletop. His hand rests in a loose curl around his teacup, but he feels no desire to lift it for a sip.
"Hey." The gentleness in her voice somehow allows his eyes to rise. He sees her regarding him with a mixture of kindness and concern. "Come on, big brother. It can't be that bad, right?"
I can't leave her waiting and worrying. I have to do this.
"What's it like when you have dreams?" What a strange way to start this, Corrin immediately thinks, but at least words are coming back to him now. "Does it feel unreal? Can you tell that you're dreaming?"
Elise clearly is unsure of where this talk is going, but she plays along with him anyway. "Uh . . . it's kind of weird, actually." She shrugs. "Like, when I'm in a dream, I can tell that everything feels different than when I'm awake. The world seems more blurry, I guess. But I don't go and think to myself, 'oh, hey, I'm in a dream right now! I must be asleep!'"
"I guess that thought doesn't cross your mind."
"But I do know that it was a dream as soon as I wake up."
"Hmm." His fingers tap a slow rhythm on the table. "I've asked a few people what it feels like when they're dreaming. Everyone finds it tough to describe. But from what I've heard, I really get the sense that my dreams are different from everyone else's."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, like, the world doesn't seem blurry in my dreams. It actually seems more vivid than real life. All the colors are deeper and every line is sharper." Corrin speaks slowly, almost unable to believe that he's finally sharing the experiences that he's kept to himself for years. "For most of my life, my dreams have been like this. Sometimes, when I wake up from a dream, I'm lying there in bed and there's energy pulsing through my body. It feels like waves rolling over the ocean."
"Oh, wow. That's amazing! Uh, is it amazing? That sounds like it could either be super amazing or kind of creepy . . ."
"It . . . it varies." He pauses to take a breath. He wonders if every step of this conversation is going to feel like a major hurdle for him. "So, anyway, about those few weeks that I spent in Hoshido."
"What the? How did we get onto this topic from dreams?"
"They're related; I'm getting there. You see, for a long time I've had the suspicion that my dreams are different than usual, but I've never known why. And then, I got captured at the Bottomless Canyon and taken to Hoshido. During those few weeks that I spent with my birth family, we talked a lot, and at one point my sis – uh, Princess Hinoka mentioned to me that Queen Mikoto had precognitive abilities."
Elise tilts her head to one side, thinking. "What is that? Oh, wait, I think I heard that word before! That means she could see the future, right?"
"Right. Apparently, she received visions once in a while. And that got me thinking: what if I inherited future sight from her? What if my startling dreams are actually visions of the future?"
He'd been watching her face so closely, it seems to happen in slow motion when her lips part into a perfect O. "Nooo way! That's incredible, Corrin. I always knew you were special, but knowing that you have this unique power makes you even cooler!"
His heart is a ship, and it just crashed into an iceberg. It sinks like a stone. "Oh, Elise . . ."
"Wh-what? What's with that look? Is it something I said?"
He shakes his head. "It's not you." The issue is him, and the false hope to which he'd been clinging. In the nights leading up to this meeting, when he'd lain awake in bed with no hope of sleep, he had prayed to the dark that his sickening fears were no more than illusions, conjured by his own madness. He'd been counting on Elise to laugh at his theory and treat it as a joke. Convince him that what he saw is not real.
Now he sees that he should've known better. It's never been in Elise's nature to be dismissive of him.
"To be clear," he mutters, "I'm not sure that I'm actually seeing the future in my dreams. That's just my guess."
"Well, it sounds like a good guess to me! Why else would your dreams be as sharp as they are? I bet you truly are gifted, and you've seen loads of things that are about to happen –"
"Stop."
She freezes, and he feels the sting of guilt. She's been trying to cheer him up ever since she arrived at his treehouse, all smiles and compliments in the face of his gloomy self. It isn't her fault that he's fallen too far down, unable to be lifted from the shadows.
"I hope," he sighs, "that I am not 'gifted'. I hope that nothing I have ever dreamed of is real. I have . . . I have seen a vision of you where you are . . ."
"Oh," she murmurs.
She already knows, doesn't she? Maybe she knows her brother too well, or maybe it's just an easy thing to guess. Either way, she can tell what words he left unspoken. He doesn't need to say the dreaded statement: I have seen a vision of your death.
"I desperately hope that it was nothing more than a dream."
"It probably was," Elise replies. Now, finally, she utters the laugh he was waiting for, but she doesn't sound so enthusiastic in it. "You must be stressed-out, big brother, if you're having nightmares like that. You want to tell me about it?"
"You don't need to know the details."
"Hey, it's my life. Can't I learn how it ends?"
He flinches.
"Sorry," she says, gently, quietly, but somehow it doesn't sound as if she's really apologizing for it. More like she's issuing a subtle warning, trying to soften the impact before more pain to come. "But I'm not going to let this go. You're the one who brought up this topic, after all. And now I'm too curious. I want to know about the vision that's been making you upset." She leans back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, eyes fixed on him.
Corrin grips the edge of the table, his whole body tense like an over-wound clock. Gods, what has become of this conversation? He doesn't want to tell her. She's just a little girl . . . and yet, there's determination in her look, showing him plainly that she would sit and wait all day for him to speak.
"I didn't see how it actually happened." He hears himself as if from a distance, letting the words slip from his lips. "I only saw myself, kneeling on the ground in an oval chamber that was lit by torches. I was shouting into the air that I had failed to protect my younger sister."
She waits, but he doesn't say more. "That's all you saw?"
"Yeah. I didn't even see you in that vision."
"Hmm. I thought you invited me to your room to warn me about what might kill me. But you don't even know how I die."
"Actually, Elise, the reason I invited you here was not simply to tell you about this vision. It was also so I could tell you I'm sorry."
"What?" She jumps a little in her seat. "Why? You haven't done anything. I'm still alive! Look at how alive I am!" She waves her arms frantically.
"Let me apologize anyway," he implores. "Even if it hasn't happened, even if it will never happen, even if it's a mere dream, or it's an alternate universe – in some way or another, I failed my duty as an older brother. I'm so sorry, Elise. I can't forget what I saw until I say these words to you."
She releases a long, long sigh. "Corrin, tell me something. Have any of your other dreams come true?"
"Uh, not that I know of."
"So how do you know that you're really seeing the future in your dreams?"
"I said that I don't know. It's only a theory. But it seems possible, right? I'm worried about it being possible."
She would never mock him outright, but seeing the faint twitch of her eye, Corrin gets the sense that she's rapidly losing belief in his theory. Her moments of calling it 'cool' are already over. "You don't know how I die. You don't even know if this was really a look at the future, or just a dream. You do realize that you might be saying sorry for something you did in a dream?"
"I know. But I couldn't forget about it. I felt everything during that dream – I felt my knees on the hard ground and I felt the grief washing over me, and it was too much to ignore."
"Humph. You worry too much. There's too little information for you to even worry about it!"
"Elise –"
She stands up. She moves around the table. She stands by the side of his chair, and she throws her arms around him, enveloping him in her thick black sleeves and her tender affection.
He can't help but stiffen into a statue. She's hugged him plenty before, but this time catches him off guard. The warmth of her presence stands so far apart from the cold despair that's haunted him lately. The misery must have isolated him more than he thought. Did he honestly forget what it feels like to be cared for, in such a short span of time?
"It'll be okay." Her voice is a gentle breeze drifting by Corrin's ear. "Every day I work hard so that I won't be a burden on the battlefield. Every day I think about how much I love my family. I want to get stronger so I can help all of you. Nothing will take me away from the ones I love. Not the war, not anything. Even if your dream really was a vision of the future, I'll find a way to change that fate."
Having her so close, even for just these moments, fills him with a sense of comfort. It reminds him that she is with him, and her spirit is as lively as ever. He's still going to pray for her safety every night, regardless, but the warmth and conviction in her words is hard to deny. Because of her, he can't help but want to trust in the future.
"Oh, Elise. You really are my light in the darkness, you know that?" He moves his arms so that he can return her embrace. "Not many people have the strength to remain as optimistic as you."
"Hey, this is more than optimism. I really believe in you. Who knows? Maybe the 'future' you saw has already been avoided. Maybe you've already done something to change this future!"
"Heh, now you're just speculating. Then again, it's not like I was doing anything else, either." He draws back so that he can see her face and her smile, and her big bright eyes that are so awake and alive. "Thank you for cheering me up, sister. I needed it."
She laughs with a joy that could revive a lost soul. "Sure thing. As long as you need me, I'll never leave your side, big brother!"
END