Walk Without Fear

Disclaimer + Note: I do not own Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. Furthermore, I totally took about three million liberties with the canon. Oh well. They were vague! Some parts lead you to believe things that I just find a little improbable, but I think the whole Micaiah thing is a bit improbable to begin with . . . uh, this fulfills two points, 1) a fic about the BK and 2) a fic about Micaiah. Uh. So. Enjoy.

Have you ever gone out into the forest alone and walked in silence, in darkness? Though you are alone, you don't feel lonely and though you cannot see, you don't feel afraid. To me, a Branded, this is a great comfort; a Branded must spend most of her life alone, after all.

Sothe can't think of the time before we were together. It's difficult for him to imagine me by myself. He was eight or nine or maybe even ten or eleven—he was malnourished, stunted and filthy. To see him now I think he might be a little older than I thought originally. My first estimate would have him now at seventeen or eighteen and now that he's well-fed he looks more he's in his mid-twenties. However I work it, his true age is a mystery and Sothe has no real interest in the parts of his life before me.

He says he was born somewhere a bit before the year 630, and at that time I must have been nearly twenty myself. My grandmother had been dead for five years and at that time the voice had told me to take off and disappear in the chaos before I was next. Of course, she was right. After all, you didn't have to be a goddess to see that I was in terrible danger.

I went to Daein because I heard that was a good place for ex-Begnion citizens, people who could swear loyalty to King Baram and hate the senate. Within a few years, though, they all died—I was reminded chillingly of the Apostle—and Ashnard ascended. I didn't care either way. At that time I had a job as a nurse in a convent-hospital. I made enough to live and I didn't care about the rest. Eventually I lost the job, but not the attitude: I was happy despite my poverty. I'm unusual in that respect.

I've always been a woman who is easy to please. I like fresh air and music. I lived in Nevassa, so I rarely got any of the former, but with my voice and Yune, I've never lacked for song. I supplemented my meager pay sometimes with fortune-telling, and this is how my life became dangerous.

Fortune-telling is also how I met little Sothe. I was twenty-seven, who knows how old he was. I didn't even know he was human when I first set eyes on him. Sothe says that his mother was a prostitute and his father was her pimp—I don't know how he knows this. Perhaps it's not hard for him to guess.

Ultimately, he was an unwanted child, and at a young age his mother decided it was just worthless for him to stay with her. She dumped him at some monastic orphanage where he learned how to lie in the face of Ashera's chosen and steal their crockery, food, and money.

..0..

"Tell me where you got these," I said. I grabbed his cheek and forced him to look at me.

At this point he wouldn't speak to me. Or at least, rarely. I didn't know his name yet. I called him a variety of different names. Today was "little shit," but only in my own head. Yes, I can be uncharitable sometimes, and remember that at this time I had only known him for a little less than two weeks. I was regretting my decision to "adopt" him.

I had told him to stay in put on the street-corner while I told fortunes and served as a cheap healer, among other things. Often, I'd run across odd jobs; there was always something for a strong pair of hands and a capable head. I'd returned to find him gone; there was a surge in the crowds to the main square to hear King Ashnard's address and I was worried that he'd been trampled underfoot.

These were the years that King Ashnard made reforms to everything. He'd abolished most of his nobility and adopted a meritocracy that appealed to me, although I couldn't stand to see the man speak before the people. He was handsome, but the one time I had stood in a crowd to see my king the mere sight of him made my flesh writhe and crawl. The experience was so jarring that I never went to his public speeches again if I could help it.

Oh yes—I'm sorry. Sothe.

"Where did you get these," I repeated, just as fiercely. I slapped him.

He didn't say a word. Now, I look back and both regret and marvel at it—my striking him. Certainly, it wasn't the last time I did it. I slapped him three more times for the same offense, and he never learned from it. I gave up. Sothe is the kind of person who takes a blow as a challenge to endure it. His early life was a blow from which he struggled to recover.

He won't say a word about it now, but I suspect that when I left without a word, it was the strongest blow he'd ever had to endure from me. I'm glad he survived, but at that point, he stopped being my little boy, who I passed off as my baby brother. It had nothing to do with the fact that at our reunion, his voice had dropped octaves and was taller than me by three inches.

I picked them up—the candlesticks. He'd spread them out on their chamois cloth that they'd been bundled in on the grimy ground of the alley. There were three, and one might have been called a candelabrum, and they were all solid silver. I bit one to check. I didn't know what he expected me to do with them. I certainly couldn't sell them.

"I'll have to dump these in the street-trash!" I said in exasperation. "Ashera help me if we're caught with these!"

The little shit—if we're being honest here, this is what I thought of him at the moment—looked indignant. I huffed.

"Oh?" I said. I cocked my head to the side. "What would you have me do with them?"

He seemed at a loss for words. He was entrepreneurial in his efforts, but remarkably naïve. Sothe later told me that he'd stolen things for a man who worked in the black market. I won't lie, I've dealt there too—food, luxury items like shoes, soap—especially during the war, when my fortune-telling turned into a look-out service. To Sothe, what this man did was mysterious and he had thought that all adults belonged to the same world. Of course he didn't tell this to me until years later, that this was why he stole precious, useless items over and over for me to wring my hands over. Candlesticks were some of the easier items to lose in the trash.

I wrapped up the candlesticks and dumped them to the wall. I grabbed Sothe's grubby hand and dragged him away as far as I could. I wouldn't get any use out of them. Not only could I not sell them—anyone experienced in black market dealing would haggle and threaten until I was paying him to take the goods off my hands, since I had no affiliation with any gang or anyone with a street reputation, and if I took them to a respectable place, they'd be suspect at once because of my ragged traveler's appearance—I couldn't return them and further more I didn't use candles.

Sothe was upset about it. I've seen him do everything intimate now, but still it's painful or shameful for him to do certain things in front of me; one of those things is crying. As a child, he cried stingy, streaky tears when he was frustrated or afraid. As a man, he almost never cries; only in very private circumstances and I know that this embarrasses him.

When I turned to check the child I was dragging behind me furiously, guilt seeped into me like a seed in soil. Like I said, he's a person who resists being struck, being hurt and prides himself on his endurance. How long he can last without faltering and showing weakness.. So when I turned to see him crying, I knew that I wouldn't ever give him up, now matter how many candlesticks he stole.

..0..

That story was a bit disjointed, wasn't it? That's one of my fondest memories of Sothe as a child, even though I was angry at the time. I've never truly regretted my decision to adopt him since.

I imagine it must be mixed in with all my other memories, which makes the story-telling hard.

I've lived through two wars and countless upheavals. Every time they destroyed my country, where ever I was at the time. During my time as "Maiden of Dawn," I wondered if my presence caused trouble. Certainly it followed me where ever I went. I've had many friends in many places; I'm indiscriminate. That's gotten me in trouble before, but I don't like to think that I can't trust someone who offers me help, honestly. Usually Yune warned me when someone had ill intent.

My life has been very long for how few years I've lived, comparatively. Did you know that Zelgius died when he was fifty years old or around there? I guessed the math. I've figured out his life, as much as I can from second-sources and guesswork and my own gut feelings and what I saw in the brief moment when Yune peered into his soul with my eyes. I wonder how he would tell a story.

His life and mine where only intertwined for a short time, if you could call what we had "intertwining." At the time, I would have, without hesitation. I thought that our destinies would extend further than they did.

I've given you an example of my story-telling; it's rather hard to listen to, isn't it, if you want to be straight to the point. I suppose it's my life that's made me this way.

I started with a happy story—now, I think I should tell you a sad one.

..0..

Where was he born? Zelgius is Daein by birth, self-exiled when he was twenty-five, reinvented in Nevassa where no one knew him or his own. He reinvented himself in Begnion. Where would he go after that, if he had no anchor to Begnion . . . ? Where I went, maybe, when I cut myself free from Sothe.

I don't know when the mark manifested. It was supposed to be on his back. In Yune's vision, I saw it there and I was struck by how sore and tired he seemed already, twenty years in the past. The Branded are disillusioned faster than any other creatures in the world. We are more easily wounded than any others because our hearts are so sick and bare.

I was nobody for a very long time. I have changed my name many times; I was not born Micaiah the fortune-teller, to my mother and her manservant. I chose it like I choose all my names: for the sound of it on my tongue. My birth was an accident, and no one needed me around anyway, until it was realized that the firstborn, no matter who she was fathered by, was the Apostle.

Because I was nobody, it made it easier for me to accept that my true nature was unwanted by the world and easier to bear. I could love people as they were because I would not stay long. I could always just leave and never fear of leaving things behind or being caught.

As soon as you become somebody, no matter how accustomed you are to being alone, it becomes harder and harder to leave with each passing day.

It's absurd, but I imagine him on the day he left his home like this: standing or sitting in a bedroom full of memories. Small watercolors of those who were once family: His mother and father, who no longer consider him their child. Sir Gawain and his secret fiancée, Elena, the high-born priestess. His sword and his armor and books. His chest of things, filled with his own clothes and keepsakes. His bed, the one that he will never be able to sleep in again. I imagine him looking at every object slowly and methodically, committing it perfectly to memory.

I imagine him closing his eyes as he walks out of the room and shuts the door. It breaks my heart to think of him never opening that door again, even if it is not the first one he has ever shut forever.

..0..

I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. I'll continue the story.

When I found Sothe, for a time it was like finding an anchor when I had been adrift, a fire in a cold night. I carry that anchor with me and it keeps me sane and kind and loving. It would be easier to be bitter if I had no anchor.

That is the case for many of my kind.

Do you know the black haired boy that stands by Ike? He is Branded. He is bitter because he has no anchor, nothing that was his constant. He may love Ike like I love Sothe and need him like the ground beneath his feet—like the fish need the sea, like the birds need the sky—but Ike is not his. Ike needs no one and belongs to everyone; one person cannot claim him, not even the one who needs him most, who needs him to say "I love you the most and you are mine as I am yours." I kept this to myself while they were among us, but now they are gone and I am free to say it.

I wonder if Zelgius was bitter, like the black haired boy, Soren. I do not know. I do not think he was ever happy. Sephiran—my own ancestor—was not a cause for him to be happy.

I'm being vague, aren't I? Sephiran was no purpose to live. He was not a reason for Zelgius, a Branded, a cursed one, a Parentless—he was no reason for the abomination to continue to live.

If he was like me, Zelgius once thought of killing himself. Before his "anchor" appeared, he thought of killing himself: not fleetingly, not idly. He had death in him, in his mind. He was waiting for it.

Sephiran provided him with a reason to continue; Sephiran provided him with many things, a great deal of things.

He provided him with a title and life in the Begnion army: he did not have to do this, to have a secret servant. Zelgius was presented as a minor royal child of Daein and a Begnion lady—he had the look of Daein in his coloring and his face—and supplanted the Countess Kadohl with his backing as the "true heir." I believe that though Zelgius permitted her to stay and manage the estate as his stewardess, they avoided seeing one another. Zelgius had his own reasons for this, and she may have hated him anyway.

She died soon, of ill health. I have no doubt Sephiran was behind that.

I seem to think poorly of Sephiran now. He may have repented and been reborn as Lehran, but I cannot forgive the things he did so easily as my sister, little Sanaki. He is not as kindly as some would see him and believe. After years of aloneness and judgement, he is cold.

Although I think Zelgius died easily for him, I do not believe for a second that Sephiran would have ever died for him. Imagine if you would: would Sephiran ever look to Zelgius and say, "You are my own heart, my sole and one true love, you, my own, my only," and then send him to die with the rest of the unworthy masses?

Sephiran's only regret was Sanaki. She was his "own heart," his beloved daughter, the child of Altina, long-dead.

I'm being so cruel, right now.

Who am I to say that Sephiran was not a true reason for living?

Sephiran gave him purpose. Zelgius was his most loyal retainer in exchange and gladly bore the sword and armor, became the Black Knight and carried out Sephiran's dark plots. All for a reason. Are we so desperate that we can settle for anything, just so that we can believe that we deserve to continue?

I wonder if he thought about what he did. Perhaps he was embittered to mankind and was only glad to do it. Perhaps he was so enslaved by gratitude that he didn't care. What do other people matter in the face of your only reason? In our time together, I never asked him, "Why did you serve Ashnard? Why did you serve Sephiran, when you knew that it would destroy this? Why did you protect me when you knew I would die too? Was it because you were told? Do you believe in Ashera's judgment? Was it all for Sephiran?"

I can see him in my mind, looking me in the eyes and saying: "Yes."

My eyes are full of tears as I say back, "Was anything for me?"

..0..

You've caught me now, in my own story-telling. This is my own personal secret. I'm such a hypocrite.

..0..

The story now is a secret story. But please bear with me. It is the saddest story I know.

..0..

Have you ever gone out into the forest alone and walked in silence, in darkness?

There's a feeling in you that is not frightened or lonely, but like a greatness is filling up your insides and pulling you up; you belong to the world, the world as it is naturally. Joyous and beautiful. I love being out of doors for this reason.

Once, when I was weary and tired from our long campaign, I went into the woods to have this feeling, perhaps to rejuvenate what I thought I had lost. I was attacked by General Jarod, who sought the pleasure of revenge from my death. Whatever that would have given him. The death of the maiden of dawn. It could have been so shattering that the rebellion would have never succeeded. That was my only thought then: that the rebellion would not succeed. Did I know then that Pelleas could never have been king? Did I know then that I was the woman to wear the crown?

As if from the darkness, he appeared by my side to defend me. Though I could not explain it, I felt no feel or distrust but rather a sense of kindness and rightness. Yune did not need to tell me that this dark knight would keep me safe. Together we brought Jarod to his knees and prepared the final blow. It struck another man, and I let Jarod escape out of honor.

I wonder what he thought of that?

..0..

Do you know how painful it is to reveal your secret stories? It hurts. It hurts so much. Everything that is perfect in your heart cracks wide open when it touches air. It rots almost immediately and you are ashamed that you ever cherished it as fondly as you did.

Many times I felt his gaze upon me. If we are honest, I enjoyed it, appreciated it: my own secret guardian that not even Yune could predict. I don't know if I expected him to appear from darkness again. Although he appeared to me again after that night many times, there was never a time like the one where we met in wilderness, in darkness. I walk in darkness without fear, but I was afraid. I chose a time when the clouds were sporadic but thick and the moon only half full. I had no other choice; it was either then or never.

I heard him though he moved silently. I turned.

"Sir Knight?" I said. No answer in the darkness, but I could hear his thoughts whispering. I don't even think Yune or Ashera, in their powers and wisdom, know how I could manage that.

I held out my hand. "Come with me!" I said. I pleaded.

"Go where?"

It was an echo in my cavernous memory. I suppose his armor could have caused his voice to resonate like that, but I have a more poetic, more accurate explanation: the wide chasm that is placed between him, and the world. Like it was between me, and the world.

"Does it matter?" I said. "Would you let me go far?"

There was no answer.

"Sothe isn't here," I said. "Yune's not even here. I'm alone. It's only me."

"I know this, Maiden."

I smiled, though he could not see. I laughed, so he could hear. "Don't call me that tonight, Sir Knight."

"I might make a similar request."

"What are you?" I asked, on a whim.

He harrumphed—an odd sound for the knight to make. I pictured then an old man, someone who was my father or grandfather who could care for me. "Alone as well."

"Two people who are alone together," I said with some irony.

I heard the sound of movement that was too soft and skilful to be distinguishable. "I'll come with you then, Micaiah."

The Black Knight followed me in darkness. We walked together for hours. I don't need much sleep. He didn't either. How many hours before we spoke again? I don't know still. It was eternal, us walking together in silence, in darkness, in each other's company. How did we know that we were the same?

I started to sing. I don't know why. I don't know why I did anything like I did.

Beloved, tell me when you'll go

Don't spare me now, I want to know

I may never feel your touch on my face again

And that's the fatal blow

But if I could choose to see you fall or never ever know

Beloved, I would choose to know.

Ah, ah, aaah, oh . . .

Beloved, I would want to know.

"Where did you learn that song?" he asked.

"In Marado," I said. I might have been telling the truth. I didn't remember where I had learned that song or why I chose to sing it, among the thousands that I must know.

"You have a beautiful voice," he said.

"Thank you," I said. It was a stammer, more like and I blushed. I have taken that compliment so many times—what made it harder to accept? I turned my head, though I did not need to; perhaps I feared that my eldritch knight could see in the dark. "Let's go to the lake."

He did not reply. His silence was his acquiescence. He would go where I went, without question.

I listened for the sound of his feet on the crunching ground, the sound of leaves scraping against the heavy plates of his armor. What sort of magic, I thought, could hide sound like that? I have good hearing and his armor was not silent or stealthy by any means.

Instead, I heard things like the nightbirds, the owls and the lizards and the insects. The rodents and the smallcats. The wind in the canopy. My own footsteps burned my own ears as I tried to hear my companion's. At last I grew impatient and I broke into a run. Somewhere behind me, a small gasp of alarm. He was there! I ran, so he had to as well.

He was not half so silent as when I had been ambling. I skipped through the blue-black without much trouble, the branches scraping my face and shoulders. My knight was not as agile, I suppose, or as small and lithe. I held up my hand, to shield my face and still my mouth: I was laughing. I was euphoric. I felt lighter, more sparkling than a star. The laughter bubbled out of me; I heard it behind me, and knew that it was not mine.

I burst from the woods and into the creek that fed the lake. I splashed with the water. It came to my knees, but did not slow me. The sheets of moonlight through the gaps between trees were brightening, the clouds were shifting. I could almost see without relying on my sense of smell, my hearing and my hands. The singing water—it sounds like song! It really does!—was my hint, my clue that revealed my companion to be behind me.

The creek rolled and emptied into the lake. I leapt out on to the shore into the moon and stars, revealed by a break in the clouds like an eye opening. I spun around. My knight, in silhouette, without the characteristic black armor and unarmed. I couldn't tell much about his face, but I was struck by the youth I saw, the uncanny and unnatural youngness of his form and shadow in the moonlight. Much younger than the old man who was my grandfather. My sore heart felt another hand squeeze.

"Are you like me?" I asked.

He looked stiff, frozen from being caught outside his tortoise-shell. I imagine now that he could not always wear his heavy armor.

"What do you mean?" he asked, cautiously now.

"Come this spring, I will be thirty-six years old," I said boldly. "I don't look it, though."

"No," he said unsteadily. "You don't."

At this moment we were at the impossible impasse. One of us would need to jump. Why not I, the one most accustomed to taking the leap of faith?

"I . . . will you come closer?" I asked. I whispered.

He did not answer me. He did not even move.

I took a step forward and he flinched. Were our defenses really so strong? Was his distrust so deep? I swallowed my disappointment.

"I suppose it's time to go back," I said weakly. My legs struggled to turn around. They wanted to walk to him; I wanted to walk to him. I wanted to close the distance myself.

The moon passed behind a new cloud. Our hesitations and pauses grew and billowed between us.

I took a step closer. I took another step. I knew where he was without seeing him. I could hear him this time. I could hear the pebbles scrape beneath the soles of his boots as he shifted his weight. I could hear him breathe, hear his fear and his thoughts—could he hear me? Was our laguz blood that strong, or was it our link?

Our link might have only been the knowledge of both aloneness and loneliness.

"Don't leave me," I said. A crack in my voice was caused by tears, not fear. I was not crying but I felt like I was.

He was silent. The words pressed up against the air, I could hear them, almost hear them—

"I won't," he almost said.

From the forest was a light, an orange light like a torch. "Micaiah!"

When Sothe's light reached me, the Black Knight had fled. I had not heard him vanish, though I knew that he could. I don't recall particularly what Sothe said to me: he is terrified of losing me again. He was hurt once before.

I had never realized before then how hurt he must have been; how much disappearing can hurt the one who wants to see you, still standing there.

..0..

I feel a little foolish now.

We never met again like that, never again. Perhaps he was too afraid to repeat it. He said, when he was facing Ike, when I was nothing but vessel for Yune and I could only dreamily watch him die in front of me, he said that the only action he took of his own was seeking out Gawain, seeking out Ike, to fight and face his master at his full power.

I think about that now. I grieve for him. No one else would: not Ike, not Sephiran. Any soldiers who loved him and revered him enough to grieve for him had the honor of dying with him. Sothe hated him, even when he saved my life. It's only me, that regrets that he had to die, that he wanted to die.

I wish so much that I could have talked to him for a little longer. I wish so much. I could have shown him life without loneliness, if he had lived longer. There is a place in this world now for the Branded. If only he had not died. If only he had not wanted to die.

Sephiran did not follow him into death. Lehran will live for hundreds of years, thousands of years and leave Zelgius waiting in the afterlife, alone again.

If only he had not wanted to die; if only I had given him a reason to want to live. Would he have abandoned his desire to fight Gawain at his prime? Would he have defeated Ike?

If only. I missed my chance.

..0..

When I walk in darkness now, I sometimes expect to hear him, or for him to emerge from darkness. I sometimes see him, outlined in grays, in my own imagination, against the darkness, in the wilderness.

I wonder now:

Did he ever wander in the forest, in silence and in darkness like I do? Did he ever go there, to trust the darkness and feel that he belonged to something wonderful? When we were together, did he act on his own? Would he have acted on his own, without thought of Sephiran, or of his master Gawain, or his death at the hands of Ike?

Could I have taught him that? Could I have taught him to walk without loneliness, without fear? With me?