WARNING! This fic is about domestic violence. I do not show any as it is going on, but it is extensively discussed. IF THIS WILL TRIGGER ANYTHING, OFFEND YOU, OR OTHERWISE UPSET YOU, TURN BACK NOW.
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem belongs to Intelligent Systems and Nintendo.
Characters: Marth, Shiida, mentions of Cornelius.
Pairings: Marth/Shiida.
Warnings: Domestic violence. Seriously. I may be overdoing it here but I am NOT responsible for anything triggered by this fic.
Author's Notes: As nervous as I am to post this fic, it's something that I've wanted to write for a long time. While there are no hints for this within Shadow Dragon nor Shin Monshou no Nazou, non-canon sources such as the OVA and the manga imply that Marth and Cornelius' father/son relationship is less than ideal. You need to look deep, very deep into the king's words as far as the manga goes, but the OVA actively shows Cornelius hitting Marth on-screen. I may be exaggerating things, but this is only half written because of those hints- the other half is that I want to prove to myself that I can handle more mature themes. I may misportray Marth's trauma and Shiida's responses may not be 100% realistic. If this is the case, I apologise; this was a lot harder than I thought.
He didn't know what he had done first: jolt awake or gasp loudly. The latter was certainly loud enough that it could have woken him. Still lying on his back, he put both hands to his face to wipe the cold sweat off. From the darkness and the cold that entered the room through the open window, he figured it was the middle of the night. Most people would be confused as to why they were awake at this hour, but Marth knew full well what had woken him.
He slowly shifted into a sitting position, careful not to shift the mattress too much. He knew his wife was a relatively light sleeper and he didn't want to wake her. He looked down, to his side. To his relief, she was still asleep. She slept peacefully, unlike him; her face was serene and she breathed easily. Of course, they were done with wars and conflicts. All that was on her mind was the child she was expecting. He resisted the urge to stroke her hair and instead slipped out from under the sheets, getting out of bed and putting on a warm robe. It was necessary; without the protection of the bedsheets, he felt just how cold the night was.
The same dream, he told himself, leaning on the windowsill. It had been haunting him for years, waking him from his slumber at terrible moments and keeping him from falling back asleep for hours. He stretched one arm, turning it over and studying it intently. It looked normal, so he lightly ran his hand over it. No pain. He was physically unharmed, and yet he was always afraid that if he looked upon his arms he would see the bruises.
He clenched his fist, his breath hitching in his throat. Not again. No, no. He needed distraction, before he got lost in painful memories. He turned around and looked around the bedroom, before finally reaching for the glass carafe of water on his nightstand. As he grabbed it and poured himself a glass, he noted how his hands were shaking. He set the carafe down a lot harder than he would have liked and clamped down on the glass and the nightstand in an attempt to make the shaking stop.
The loud crash with which the glass shattered on the floor told him he had failed. He clutched one arm to his chest and stepped away from the site of impact, just as he saw and heard his wife stirring in the bed. He briefly considered leaving the room, walking around the halls for a few minutes; it was what he had done many times as a child, when he couldn't sleep at night. But by the time he'd made the decision, he was already too late. "Marth..?" his wife muttered, sitting up and brushing her blue hair out of her face so she could look at him. "What are you doing at this hour?"
"It's- nothing you need to worry about," he said, turning his back to the bed so he wouldn't have to look at her. He knew he couldn't look her in the eye and lie to her. "I'm fine. Please go back to sleep." His voice didn't shake, impressively enough, but he heard rustling behind him and knew he'd made a mistake. She knew something was wrong when he wouldn't look at her precisely because he couldn't lie to her. "Shiida," he said, "Please."
"Are you alright?" she asked, audibly wide awake, and Marth shivered when she lightly put her hand on his arm. "Have you hurt yourself?" Fearing she referred to a bruise he hadn't seen, Marth stepped forward, away from her touch, and had already started inspecting his arm when he realized she spoke of the glass he had dropped.
"I haven't," he said. "I just… I've just had a nightmare. That's all."
"You've been having a lot of those lately." He froze and finally turned to face her. Shiida sat on her knees on their bed, looking at him with that expression on her face that meant she was concerned about him. Of course she was. Shiida was a wonderfully caring woman, but she had the habit of making a fuss out of things that were not a big problem. He knew for a fact his nightmares had not increased in number nor in intensity since he had wed her; it was just that now that she slept next to him, she had to have picked up on the signs that he didn't sleep peacefully.
"People have nightmares," he tried. "I'm simply no exception."
"Not like yours." Her voice was urging, as if she was trying to squeeze whatever information she could out of him. "I sleep lightly, Marth. I often wake up from your moaning, on rare occasions your screaming." Marth turned beet red. He had no idea he was that noisy in his sleep. "Sometimes you trash and flail in your sleep as if you're trying to escape the grasp of some manner of beast." She shook her head. "In all the time we have been married I have witnessed you sleep peacefully only a handful of nights."
Marth had shut his eyes and shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it."
"You do." As usual, Shiida saw right through him. He could fool Merric, he could fool Jagen, and if he really tried, maybe he could even fool Elice. But there was no fooling Shiida when it came to his feelings. "You're afraid to talk about it. Do you not trust me?"
"I do, it's just…" He clenched his arm so hard his nails dug deep into his skin. "It's not something I have ever talked about to anyone. I don't know where to begin and… I'm not comfortable talking about it."
"Come here," Shiida implored, one hand held out to him. "You need to get it off your chest, I can tell. You can tell me anything," she added when he didn't respond immediately. "I love you."
Those three words broke him. He took her hand and joined her on the bed, where she moved further back so he could lie down and rest his head on her upper legs. One of her arms came to rest loosely on his shoulders while she supposedly supported herself with the other one. "Start with the easiest thing…" she started, "What kind of nightmares are they? Is it the same thing every time?"
Marth couldn't even consider making something up. Tonight was the night it would come out; something he still believed to be one of the best-kept secrets of Altea's royal family. He'd certainly always made sure no one would know. "They are recurring, yes. It's something from my childhood which haunts me and robs me of joy." She stroked his shoulder lovingly, encouraging him to go on. "I must ask, Shiida… how well did you know my father?"
"King Cornelius?" Shiida asked, "Not all that well. I know he was a great warrior and a good king, but that's all… I never spoke with him in private."
"A great warrior and a good king," Marth repeated. "Those are true. But… urgh." He put one hand to his forehead. "I have no desire to speak ill of the dead, but… Father came up short in one aspect of his life."
"What was that?"
"Being a father. I cannot speak for Elice; she was a completely different child than I was, and was likely treated differently." He sighed deeply. "But I am firmly convinced that my father hated me." Shiida continued to stroke his shoulder, her hand warm and comforting. "I was a disappointment to him. A weak-bodied coward, bringing nothing but disgrace to Anri's bloodline." He sighed, turning restlessly so he could look up at the ceiling. Shiida pulled her arm back and instead put her hand on the crown of his head. "Elice was the perfect child, but women cannot inherit Falchion. That is the only reason I even exist; to pass the sword down to future generations."
"You don't know that," Shiida tried. "What makes you say that?"
"He said it." Marth had memorized his father's words. Verbatim Cornelius had varied his words, but the gist had always come down to the same. "He said all of this so many times while he…" He stopped there. Shiida stroked his hair.
"While he did what?" she asked, although her voice quivered. She may already have suspected what Marth had wanted to say but couldn't get out of his throat. Sons turning out a disappointment were nothing new nor overly shocking. It was as though something inside him still feared the former king's wrath, though, so clear had King Cornelius made it that no one could learn about what went on behind closed doors.
Marth swallowed. He was dead. He couldn't hurt him anymore. "It… it started when I was ten or eleven years old. I don't remember exactly. It was after my sword training, when my instructor had told him that I had made no effort to improve. He… caught me in the castle halls, took me to my room, and locked us in." He swallowed again, shaking his head in protest of what his mouth was saying. "He would always lock us in. He didn't want anyone to know."
"W-what would happen?" Shiida's voice now outright shook, and Marth realized what it was she was thinking of.
He jolted up, putting one hand on the mattress to keep him sitting and raising one hand in a gesture of protest and reassurance. "N-nothing indecent, I promise! My father was abusive, not a monster!" Silence fell and Marth prayed that Shiida would understand what he meant with those words. That way, he wouldn't have to say it out loud with any more words than he already had.
She put her hand on his face. "He… beat you, then?" she asked, to which Marth only shut his eyes in pain. He wanted to be free of the memories. "Marth… I'm so sorry." She embraced him tightly, and Marth put one hand on her back.
He just kept talking. Now that he'd begun, he couldn't stop the words from coming. "It wasn't a constant or near-constant thing. Sometimes we'd go for weeks without anything happening." It had always been all the more painful when it had happened after a lull. "He got worse over time. The longer I refused to become a man, the more frustrated and angry he became. I… passed out often. Nearly died once." She clutched him tightly for a moment.
"H-how long did it go on for?"
"The last time was scarcely a week before he died." For four long years had the abuse dragged on, four years of worrying that everything he did would earn him a beating. When his father had died, his first reaction had been horror; horror at the betrayal of their long-time ally and the loss of his father. But after the initial response had ebbed away, he… "…when I heard of his death I was relieved. I was happy that it would finally stop…"
"That's not true." Shiida broke their embrace to put her hand back on his face and wipe away his tears. He hadn't even realized he'd burst out crying. "It's okay. I'm sure that was only a small part of what you felt. And a perfectly understandable reaction." Another silence fell as she continued to wipe his tears away until he put his hand on hers. "Do you… You don't have any scars, do you?"
The question was unnecessary. She had seen all of him many times, so she knew he wasn't scarred. "Not physically," he said. "As a child I had to cover them up, but any bruises I had have healed over the past few years." When they'd been younger, Merric had commonly commented on his preference for long-sleeved clothing and long gloves. It had been a fashion choice the prince had made not out of preference but out of necessity. He would use his arms to protect his face, as they were easier to cover. "Elice healed the worst of the marks. The most visible ones. She must have thought me the poorest rider in the realm, for whenever she asked we would tell her I had fallen off my horse."
He chuckled humourlessly. "So, no, all in all… my body is fine. If I have any scars they're from the wars, not from my father."
"But your mind?" He only shook his head at his wife's question. The pain was one thing. The pain had stopped. But the crushing realisation that he was not, and would never be, good enough to meet the high standards of his family, remained. His father's words of disappointment still echoed in his head. The hatred audible in his voice tore at his heartstrings. "…that's it, isn't it."
"It is. That is why I flail and scream in my sleep." He hung his head. "I dream of it. Every night of restless sleep is a night that he invades my dreams, beating me until I bleed, until I can no longer stand up, and…" His breath hitched, and he needed a few moments to regain his composure. "I can deal with the pain. The pain stops when I wake up. But his words…"
"His words remain," Shiida finished. "I'm so sorry, Marth. I understand now." He took her hand from his face and lowered it, holding on to it tightly. "Is… there anything I can do? Can I make it any better?"
"I don't know," he said. "I… I really don't know." He'd already mostly accepted that this would haunt him until the end of his days. He felt a weight had been lifted from his chest now that he had confided in her, but he also still held the fear that he would be punished for letting the secret out. For a few minutes the two again sat in complete silence, staring down at their hands. Then, Marth chuckled humourlessly. He was a veteran and hero of two continent-shattering wars. He governed Altea well, and he knew many rulers of the other parts of the continent would be abdicating their territories to him soon.
And yet, despite what he KNEW he had done and was capable of, the words of his father were still far more powerful and significant in his mind. No matter what he achieved, he would always be Cornelius' weak and worthless coward of a son.
Shiida granted him his thoughts, but finally looked up at him. "If you come up with anything, just… let me know. I want to help."
"I know. I will." He managed a smile at her. "Thank you, Shiida." This time, he was the one who raised his hand and put it on her face. "If not for you, I might have gone mad by now." She leaned forward to kiss him, and with that, the subject was closed for the moment.
Marth slept dreamlessly for the remainder of the night, waking slowly with Shiida's hand still in his. He would be plagued again in less than a week, but something was different. Now, whenever he woke screaming and trashing, he had a warm, loving woman next to him who would comfort him. He was no longer alone with his pain. And that was worth something.