a/n: Well. This happened.

It's a story I've already finished (I'll be uploading the rest of it within the next few days), but it's definitely one heck of a story. It's dramatic, pretty fluffy, and has absolutely zero battle in it, so if you're here for that, I wouldn't bother with all 20000 words...haha.

Anyways, I worked my tail off on it (sorry, Kaden), and I hope you like it. It's definitely a...weird twist on the game, as I follow Leo through the beginning of the game until the end of his life. It's fluffy and it's goopy, but hopefully you're into that sort of thing, because here this is, in all it's glory. Leo is a little OOC, sometimes, just because there's some instances that I feel he would have changed to react that way. Anyways, I hope you love it as much as I do (I'm quite bias, though) and please enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Fire Emblem: Fates or its characters. I did write a pretty long story about them, though.

RATED T FOR: Leo's excess use of "damn" and some suggestive stuff.

SPOILERS: For Birthright and Conquest, Fire Emblem.


Uncertain and Stronger Still

22,896 words.


i.

[You never did tell me how you felt those few days where you had to choose. I can't imagine they were anything worth remembering.]

Corrin smiled into his mouth as he held her, hands entwined into his hair.

When her extended family visited the Northern Fortress, it was something of a dream, she figured. Something of a longing and a beauty—the fortress itself was so cold and unmoving, so lifeless and deserted, that the presence of her siblings and of her friends made it much more worthwhile.

From there, however, Corrin couldn't quite pin down when she had first fallen in love with Leo.

She assumed it was just brotherly love, a love grown because he visited her the most frequently and could often be valued at the highest in her heart. Leo loaned her books while he was away, brought stories and tales from outside the walls, and often told of his extravagant and dangerous missions that took him away from the fortress for so long. But he was really the only sibling that kept coming back, time after time, again and again.

Corrin knew he came mostly to appease his introverted, quiet self—the boy full of silent dreams and genius tactics—at first. But then his visits became more frequent than that and he would be around at least once a week, if not more, mostly for tea or for dinner, and Corrin loved it, him and his visits and his books.

Elise and Camilla visited, of course, quite often and with pretty presents of dresses and necklaces and teacups, but they never stayed long, and if they did, it was often to give Corrin lessons of etiquette or teach her about how a proper wife was to behave. Funny, really, since that seemed to be her only life purpose.

But it made her feel dull, made her feel dead, made her feel lifeless.

So when Leo took her to the top of the castle and trained her, trained her with swords and with tomes and with staves, she felt alive; Corrin felt like that was where she belonged, on the battlefield, fighting for what she believed in. Or perhaps changing the world, helping other trapped girls in stranded castles without fathers and without homes.

Feeling alive, she guessed, was what made her love Leo.

She associated him with it, the feeling of freedom and of passion, and soon enough, he became her everything, much to Jakob's dismay; Leo's visits made her smile throughout the week, his forgotten books stacked on her nightstand so she could read and reread, his laugh and his insight often replayed in her dreams.

If nothing else, Corrin figured it was because he was beautiful—cliché, in all ways, but Leo was. Something of an angel, but not quite; he was somewhere in between, a light sort of star to a dark, wicked sky. He was thoughtful and quiet, but never quite shy. Unsure, maybe, if he was blushing or laughing, but confident in his thoughts and in his processes. His eyes never seemed to dull, even in a world where his father sent him into deadly, moral-less missions, and left him battered and scarred.

She remembered that now as she kissed him.

Leo's kiss was remarkable—Jakob had always laughed at how she went on for hours about how the prince kissed her. Her butler always claimed she had nothing to compare it to, that Leo was magnificent because he was all she had. But she had kissed Silas once or twice, and many of her storybooks had told her what a kiss should be.

His kiss was certainly what it should have been.

He hadn't kissed her until he was sure they were unrelated, though at that point, Corrin was already in love with his soul and with his mind and it was much too late for her heart's desire. When he came knocking at her door with the news, however, he had kissed her then and there, shyly at first, unsure only because he had never done something quite like that, kiss a girl who was beautiful beyond her years and desirable because of her thoughts, not her body—though that was quite beautiful too.

Now they kissed again, and Corrin laughed again into his mouth, her nose pressed against his, and she felt his smile pressed unto her lips.

"Something funny, Corrin?" He asked and his mouth trailed a little further off to give her space to reply, leaving lines of kisses across her cheek and her cupid's bow, over the bridge of her nose and the line of her throat.

"Not entirely," she said, and her hands found a tighter grip into his hair, pulling him so she could fit her mouth squarely unto him. "Just happy. It's not a feeling I'm familiar with."

Leo's smile pressed further and further onto her and she laughed again, his kiss and her breath mingled and mixed, his heart and her soul caught up together into one. There was a beauty to it, the way she loved him—so entirely, so wholly. It was uncertainty, but in all ways, it was true.

Everything about him was true, so true; he made sense when nothing else did—and so, nothing really made sense without him.

His hand had just begun to feel across her shirt when the knock at the door startled them both.

They flew apart, hands pulling, hair flying, hearts racing, and Leo pressed a final kiss onto her mouth before he jumped up and into the chair near to the bed. He grabbed a book from the nightstand on his way there and pulled it open upon sitting down.

Corrin wasn't quite as fast, smoothing her hair and then just flopping onto the bed, her arms and legs spread out, long and gangly, her hair a halo across her pillows.

Xander opened the door to find Leo reading aloud to his older sister. He was, undoubtedly, unaware that either of them knew they were unrelated.

"And on the third day of the summer, the man—Ah, uh, Xander! Hello."

Corrin sat up on the bed, her eyes unfocused, and smiled at her eldest brother, her legs crossed as she shifted them over the bed. "Hi, Xander."

He raised an eyebrow at them both, but turned to face Corrin from the doorway. "It's time for your training session. I think this may be the one, little princess, if you prove yourself worthy."

"O—of course!" Corrin jumped up from the bed and her face was alight with real excitement. "I'll be right out."

Xander shut the door behind him and the knob clicked into place.

Instantly, Corrin was seated in Leo's lap, her legs slung over his waist, her eyes shining.

The prince jumped in surprise, but his hands found their place on her hips and he only welcomed her to him. "So this could be it," he said, and he tried to sound enthusiastic, for her, if nothing else, even if that was the last thing he was. "Your final test."

"Yes!" She was grinning, and it was contagious; Corrin was so naïve, so young in her thoughts, that it made it hard to resist anything she was feeling. "I could join you all at the castle now, if Father finds me worth it."

Leo nodded, but his mouth found a place at her neck and he held her tightly to him, her warmth infectious, the pump of her blood slow and familiar to his heart. "Won't you be careful, Cor?"

The softness to his voice made her hesitate for a moment. "Always."

Her mouth pressed a final marking to his lips before she moved, dragging herself from him and reaching for her sword.

He'd miss the way she felt against him.


The day that was supposed to be her happiest was quite possibly her worst, he realized, as he sat now in his chambers.

His head was in his knees, the moon the only thing lighting his way, and he sighed, hands gripped tighter in his hair.

Corrin was gone. The scum he had set free snatched her, assumedly, when Father had sent her out for her first mission and she was nowhere to be seen. Hoshido was the last option and of course, the last place they could check. But for now, there was no way across the border, nothing to help them across.

Father had only laughed when Leo mentioned it, that Corrin was likely there, unsure and lost, her hands trembling and heart confused. The prince had insisted they find a way across the border and fast, a way to break the spell that the queen had placed upon the land and immediately invade, if not to only take the princess back but to take new land.

Garon had shrugged him off with little more than a chuckle, waving him off, shaking his head. "I've already taken care of it," he said, and that was all.

Already taken care of it. What did that mean? Leo couldn't imagine anything was taken care of if Corrin wasn't safe at home. There was something strange and entirely corrupt about the entire thing, and yet…he couldn't face his father. No one could. There was nothing to be said and nothing to be done, so Leo retreated back to his room and sat with his head between his knees, trying to come up with something that could put his mind at peace.

But she was the only thing.

He loved her so, his princess, never a sister but a friend, a lover. She was the only place he could be at home, the only place he found it easy to smile, to laugh, and she was so beautiful, he often lost his breath without even touching her. And yet, it was pure awe, only awe, that filled her face when she saw him, as if he was the prize instead of the outrageously lucky winner.

Without her, he was lost, drowning—he couldn't name the feeling if he had tried, the feeling of being so surely lost and confused and unsure, but to have never of been more confident in his love for anything. His fear was dominant now, his fear for her, his fear of his father. He was stuck, trapped. She was gone.

Corrin was gone.

And Leo was lost.


The next time he saw her was on the battlefield.

Damn it, he had hoped she would never have to see one, the way the blood spilled and the flags fell; it was no place for her, the delicate girl, the one with the bright eyes and the endless hope and the wonder in her face. He didn't want her to lose it, any of it, herself or her beauty or her mind.

And he didn't want to lose her.

But she stood now between the two armies, the two nations who were so achingly different, so oddly and forsakenly strange, that she looked like an angel descending, caught in the light of the sun that shone from beyond Hoshido's capital.

She appeared unharmed, her skin just as pale as it had always been, her arms outstretched in uncertainty as she stood between Nohr and Hoshido.

Xander was speaking to her, proud atop his mount, and Leo wasn't listening, but he knew he was asking her to come home.

To come home. It was asking very little of her, to come home. Return to your prison, return to your family that visits twice a month. Come back to where the sun won't touch your skin and your eyes will dim eventually and your soul will be trapped.

But she could come back to him.

Leo knew she wasn't coming home.

He knew it, but it didn't mean he didn't hate everything for it.

He hated his father, his brother, his sisters—hated them all for leaving her like this, trapping her like this. He hated Nohr and Hoshido, hated war and pain and battle, hated knowledge and wisdom and blood.

He hated her for not choosing him.

Corrin turned her back on Nohr by drawing her sword, the same motion Leo had taught her not even a week ago. She stood back on her heels, balanced atop her toes, her legs poised, shoulders squared. She was achingly beautiful that way, so strong, so sure. Her weapon gleamed, pointed at Xander's heart.

It took her a moment, at least, to compose herself, and her hand shook.

"Xander."

Her voice, by the gods, he had missed it. The softness was still there, even as she betrayed everything she had ever known, and she was refusing to look at him, her eyes trained solely upon the commander of the troop.

Leo had never really been happier than he was in that moment that he was not the Crown Prince of Nohr.

It was irony at its finest, as the girl raised in the dark chose the light.

"Withdraw your troops."

Battle occurred after that and Leo wasn't sure what happened through most of it; he fought, but he didn't, his eyes trained mostly on her, his magic always aimed away from coming close to her. She seemed to be doing the same, avoiding him at any cost possible, heading straight for Xander. It was easier for her, he realized, to fight Xander, than it would ever be to fight him or Elise or Camilla. She could pretend it was practice.

She could pretend it wasn't real.

The ride home was a quiet one, a one of silent cries and hushed words and defeated lies. There was nothing else to it. Corrin had chosen them, her birth family; she had chosen them.

And more than anything, Leo wished he could understand.