Walk on a fine line
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Summary: You were born a Leonora instead of a Leo. It displeased your mother. So she changed it. Born-a-girl Leo! Gender ambiguity. Semi-AU.
Disclaimer: Fire Emblems isn't mine, and though I could use the money, I make no profit from this fic.
Rated: T, for now
Warnings: Heavy themes here folks. Like manipulation, murder, gender ambiguity. Fun, fun, fun.
Song: "Sorry about your parents", Icon for Hire
Notes: Seriously, I've no idea where this comes from. Especially when I should be working on my other fics (Kaida, if you see this, I'm soooorry), or even better working for my exams. Meh.
English isn't my native language, I'm not beta'ed. This is me appologizing in advance for the multiple ways I probably butchered grammar and decency.
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Your mother wanted a boy. A puppet to place on the throne, to be more accurate. Your mother was the kind of woman who would have been just fine popping out once in a while monkeys if it could secure her a life of pointless luxury, the right to pester sevants around, and the pride to gloat to her rivals : "See that pompous idiot sitting on his pretty seat? I made him".
Unfortunatly, she got you. Most placid child to ever be born, ugly to add insult to injury. But those small dysfunctions she could have forgiven had you not have the nerve to forget the most important parts of your developpement in the nine months you spent squatting her belly. Important parts such as penises.
A girl. Girls, as everyone well educated was aware, did not, as a matter of fact, make appropriate heir material. Especially when there were already lots of actual heir material running around.
It would not do. But your mother wouldn't let herself be held back by petty details like biology or a conscience, no, not Mother dearest. What she lacked in common sense and basic human decency she compensated with ressources. Such as years-long plotting skills and magic.
She did not went as far as actually changing you into a real testosterone-fulled piece of clay, more by lack of talent than ethics, but managed to cast a glamour powerful enough to fool everyone around you.
Including yourself.
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'Life is war', your mother taught you. Might be the only useful she did teach you.
Life is war, and you can only count on yourself. And if she hadn't convered that lesson already, your stay at Krakenburg Castle would have provided instead.
See, there was this funny thing known as Concubine War, where mothers sent their offspring to the metaphoric arena in order to destroy the concurrence that happened to be children. And boy did they destroyed. They destroyed so much only four of them remained: Xander, Heir to the Throne, Camilia, fatal beauty in the making and bright little Elise, not even out of the nursery yet.
And yourself, the Fell Dragon only know how. Honestly, you wouldn't have bet on your survival. The scrawny, not to say sickly looking, socially awkward kid, with the self-confidence and charisma of a dead fish.
Definitly not heir material, not even with a fake penis. You doubted your father ever registered your existence before you happened to be among the few children he did have left.
Your mother on the other end, oh your mother thrived on the chaos. The intrigues! The murders! The multiple occasions to crush your rivals into the mud! All she ever wanted in life, minus that pathetic burden she had to drag along, but what's a minor setback when she practically got licence to kill women with prettier hair? Or have killed, more precisely. Your mother never was the type to get her hands dirty after all.
All in all, it was all fun and giggles for her until she got herself murdered.
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It took three days after your mother's funeral for her spell to vanish. There you went, minding your own buisness, confined into your rooms, drifting without purpose like a dog that just lost its master.
And then! You woke up, eyes blurry from another sleepless night spent crying with a knife under your pillow, into the wrong body. The body of seven years old, yes, that did looked like yours, you even still had the ugly scar from that one time one of your older sisters stabbed you in the leg. Mother did make her pay for that. Fun times.
But it was wrong wrong wrong.
You spent two days into a hazy panic, convinced that this was all a plot from one of the last remaining Concubines, though a needlessly complicated one. You went through all your mother's magic books like a mad hurricane of terror. It was, after all, one of the few things you were actually good for, studying. 'My nerdy bookworm', Mother called you on her rare moments of fondness. Those happened sometimes, not very often to be truthful. Most of the time, she called you 'boy', just in case you weren't sure.
But you were sure. You had no idea. It never even crossed you mind, that your own parent, that anyone might alter you in such way. Not for a second.
Yet here layed the evidence. The glamour spell, in her favorite book, the one she kept close to her at all times, the one you had been strictly forbidden from reading. She had even annoted the page with personal observations and ameliorations, born out of seven years of constant trial.
Your whole world, or what was left of it, crumbled under your feet.
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Surprisingly, it was Xander who took upon himself to schedule a rescue mission.
You did not doubt Camilla pestered him about it, as she kept on showing up at your door on a daily basis to try to lure out of your lair. In retrospect, it seemed pretty oblivious your older sister acted out on the worry you might have died on your own spit or something. At the time however, in your feverish paranoid near-madness, you were absolutly convinced she was trying to get you to lower your guard in order to kill you.
Not that she would have any problem to. You were quite pathetic back then.
But anyway, one morning, it was your older brother that camped on your door, instead of your usual violet-haired most persistent sollicitor.
"Leo," he called out, his voice strong and even. "Please let me in."
You let him in. You still had no idea why. Perhaps you knew he wouldn't let you be anyway, perhaps some parts of you longed for the approval of your big brother.
Perhaps you were just that tired.
Xander, as tall and unbreakable as a tree, stood there and gasped at the improbable sight you must have made. "Leo?"
You shrank under his incredulous stare. You wondered what he could think, seeing you like this, a messy pile of proeminant bones, crass and self-loathing. You still had your knife beetween your shaking hands, the one Mother had given you for your fifth birthday.
"Life is war, boy. You'll need it", she had whispered into your ear, because your mother had been like that. Cynic and ruthless enough to gift a weapon to her five-year old child, and feel nothing about it.
Xander knelt in front of you, and you froze like a rabbit. Mother would have been so ashamed. You waited for the strike as his hands fell on your shoulder, then slided on your skinny back.
He embraced you.
You stayed rigid under the foreign touch, terrified and confused. Of the back-stabbing at first, and then when the blows did not come, that he discovered your dirty, dirty secret. You couldn't remember the last time anyone touched you like this, embracing every parts of you. Surely Xander would feel the wrongness of your body?
You should have put the glamour back in place, you knew. You could have, you were talented enough in magic to. It would have been easier, safer, to burry that inapropriate body under the familiarity of the spell, and be done with it.
But you couldn't. The simple thought of subjecting your flesh to magic again, to violate yourself again to the will of others, this time on purpose made you want to puke. It was intolerable.
Fortunatly, if Xander noticed anything strange, he showed none of it. You began to relax a little, and his hold got even tigher. It felt kinda...nice. In a way.
"I'm so sorry, Leo," your invincible big brother cried into your shoulder. Cried. "I failed you, I failed all of you."
And then he released you for his shaking arms, and faced you with red eyes and a iron resolve. You knew at that moment you would follow this man into the end of the world.
"But I would do better now I promise. I will take care of you Leo."
And Xander always had been nothing but a man of his word. Unlike yourself.
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You had no idea what you were. Boy or girl? Female or male? What was the truth, what was the lie?
You felt like a boy, for sure. You had been a boy all your short life after all. Then be it. It was easier being a boy anyway.
And yet, you wondered. You stared at skirts for too long, yearned of the softness of ribbons. Some nights, you imagined yourself with long silky hair, fancied yourself into a pretty dress. Some nights the simple thought of changing anything terrified you.
Camilla fascinated you. Your sister had barely reached her thirteenth birthday, yet she already flourished as a confident woman, parading her feminity like a magnificient cloak. You could feel her growing curves when she hugged the hell out of you, soft in ways you were terrified and impatient in the time to grow into.
And boy did she hugged you. Camilla had that ridiculous notion they all belonged to the same loving family, and kept mothering you all furiously, even Xander. Elise naturally thrived on the attention, Xander subjected himself to Camilla's nosiness without much protestation, but you remained wary. You remembered still how ruthless and cunniving her mother had been, so much the King had her executated in the end. Not that you had lots of room to talk about.
You were pretty sure it was Camilla's mother that got your own killed. It did put a strain to the growing sibling relashionship the violet-haired princess aimed for. But Camilla was nothing if stubborn, and eventually wormed her way in into those barriers you errected around your heart.
They all did in the end. Elise only had to smile that sunny beam of hers at you and you melted like pouty beetween her tiny hands. Xander you craved too much the approval of to even consider disobey. Your indifferent father, you had long stop carying for but you wanted to be their little brother so much it hurt sometimes.
And yet the urges remained. You were eight when you stole your first dress. A rather sad piece of clothe, falling appart on the edges that belonged to one of the younger maids. You kept it hidden in your chest for a week before daring to try it on.
The dress, not the maid.
It did not suited you naturally. If only because the dress was made for older girls, and you lacked the necessary parts to fill it appropriately. You looked positively ridiculous. You kept the dress anyway.
All in all, you thought you handled yourself well enough, beetween Court intringue, the ever growing expectations of your duties as second Prince, and your close-knit siblings. You still werent't sure what you were, aside from a freak, but it was fine. Miraculously, your siblings seemed to like your nerdy, awkward self well enough.
And then came Corrin.
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