Grace

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

Aless/Nanna is an intriguingly problematic pairing. A bit of one-sided Aless/Nanna against a backdrop of Aless/Laylea and Leif/Nanna.

Cheap bracelets touched in gilt jangled against each other as Laylea stretched her legs out on the settee.

"It's nice to have a place to call home," she said.

Aless stared at her, wondering if she was joking or serious. Her voice sounded sincere, but her dark eyes were narrowed into that cynical look she gave him when he talked about honor and she talked about what people had to do for a living.

Besides, Mease was all right. They'd stayed in plenty of worse places.

Laylea began to hum to herself as she fussed with her hair, adding small braids to the mass of loose curls falling around her shoulders. Aless watched her for a bit, then sat down at the writing desk Lord Seliph had given him and reached for the letter tucked into his coat. The aged paper crackled between his fingers as he pulled it out.

He'd read it, but he hadn't really read it, hadn't gone over every line until the words were cut into his heart. He'd glanced at the lines written for him more than a decade before, inscribed by the hand of the aunt he couldn't remember, but the letter hadn't been what convinced him to... to stop, any more than Laylea's blunt words had convinced him that he was wrong about some things.

She had walked up to him, gliding along like a swan on the water, her head so nicely poised on that slender neck. She'd faced him down with those wide blue eyes and delivered that letter, a goddess granting some miserable mortal a favor. Aless believed her when he hadn't believed anyone else, not because Nanna carried that old letter around but because he couldn't look into her eyes or hear her voice and not believe her.

Something in her eyes, her voice, spoke to him the way the Mystletainn spoke to him. Maybe it was blood calling to blood, the grace of Hezul.

-x-

Thracia was a worthless piece of hell, and Aless didn't really know why Lord Seliph was throwing everything under his command at this ragged wreck of a country.

It's not like Agustria, Verdane, and Grandbell aren't all under enemy control, Aless thought. Oh, wait...

But she immersed herself in this fight; Thracia mattered to her, presumably because it meant so damn much to Lenster's weedy prince. Thracia was worth the hazard to her as she raced back and forth across the harsh land, bringing aid to the wounded with her healing staff... and that in turn meant that Nanna needed someone watching over her. It could have been Aless; Nanna seemed torn between riding with Prince Leif, whose voice still cracked when he got excited about something, and fighting alongside her brother Delmud, who already had sworn allegiance to Aless as the true ruler of Agustria whenever they got around to freeing it. Aless didn't feel very scrupulous about using Delmud as bait- come with us,we're your family, join us. Delmud had as much of a claim to Nanna's attention as Leif did, and it wasn't like Leif didn't have other people supporting him. At least he still had the ones who hadn't died in that suicidal raid on Alster.

The rumor that Leif had pledged to marry Nanna wasn't anything Aless took seriously, either. As Aless heard it, the proposal hinged on Leif locating Nanna's mother.

Good luck with that, Aless thought, as he ran his fingers over the script left by the aunt who'd vanished somewhere in the very desert in which he'd come of age. He remembered nothing of Lachesis; he knew her from legends, from tavern songs and jokes swapped around the fire in mercenary camps. The princess too fond of her brother, the vixen who'd ensnared countless men in her golden hair. He knew her as another in the long list of people who'd made his mother cry.

And yet, her words had come to him despite the years and distance, offering Aless the assurance he needed that he hadn't betrayed the legacy of his parents in signing up with Lord Seliph's quest. The message itself might have lied, though... and it must be more convenient lies, if Lachesis proved as false as legend painted her. The message might have lied, but not the messenger...

Through Nanna, radiant as a pearl, the true Lachesis, the true Sir Sigurd, the truth of his own father was transmitted to Aless. Aless heard the words of Lachesis in Nanna's clear voice now as he read over the three creased pages of the letter, and the revealed truth was more murky, and yet more convincing, than the half-truths and lies he'd been fed. Sir Sigurd had not murdered his father. Lord Seliph was not the heir to Sigurd's crimes, because the crimes hadn't happened. Aless needed to turn his mind and passion to other things... like his trampled homeland of Agustria.

Laylea combed out her waves of dark hair, and the scent of amber and jasmine drifted over to where Aless sat. He hardly noticed it; his blood had been lit with a different kind of fire.

His way was clear now, or it would be once Mystletainn had done its work. Aless would do what Seliph needed him to, and then he'd take on all of Agustria. He already had Delmud's allegiance, and all Aless needed now was her. The heirs of Hezul, united... Delmud as his right hand, and Nanna as his voice, his grace, his messenger. No force upon earth would stop them.

And if Aless found Lachesis safe and sound along the way, all the better.

-x-

The sun was scraping the mountains in the southwest as Aless returned to Mease after another day of defending impoverished villagers from... well, Aless wasn't entirely sure what any longer. Defending them from the Empire? From their own king? Themselves? It would have been nice if this Thracia campaign had made any sense, but it felt to Aless that Lord Seliph was permitting this entire fiasco so that his cousin Prince Leif could settle personal scores with Thracia's king. Part of him wondered why Leif was being given that luxury. Part of him wondered how everyone else was going to take it should Leif's feelings about King Trabant prove as misguided as Aless's own feelings toward Seliph's father.

Aless was almost looking forward to that particular reckoning.

But Thracia was costing them dearly and not giving a hell of a lot back. Aless, upon arrival at Mease, went directly to the grand hall they'd converted to an infirmary so he could see how Laylea was doing. Better than she'd been that morning, he decided; she was sitting up and smiling now, and she'd somehow managed to paint the nails on all of her toes in spite of her bound and splinted leg. She wriggled the crimson-tipped toes at him to show that she'd be up and dancing again in no time. He traced a finger along her left ankle, the good one, and wondered what fate had in store for her. He owed her, really... she'd done her part to break him out of the falsehoods that had bound him for so long by chipping away at his certainty. He couldn't make her Queen of Agustria or anything like that, but he could do something... he just hadn't figured it out yet.

As he pushed through the curtains that bounded off Laylea's bed, a wail, high and wild like the cry of a mountain cat, erupted to his left. Aless lifted the curtain to that section of the infirmary and felt his stomach lurch as recognition hit him. He didn't even know her voice, not like this, not as a high wavering sound punctuated by the sobs that got caught in her throat. He hardly knew her face the way it was now, all open mouth and teeth and those cries issuing from it. But that was her bob of golden hair, and that was her feather... and those were Leif's arms around her, holding her upright as she wept.

Neither of them saw him- Aless doubted either of them saw anything right now- and Aless watched as the healing staff slipped through her fingers. He heard a tinkle of crystal at the staff smashed against the floor, but all he watched was her fingers, those delicate fingers that clawed and clutched at Leif's shirt while the prince stood there like a piece of wood, tears flowing down his own face and dripping down from his chin.

Children, Aless thought, as he saw the ribbon of saliva that trickled from the corner of her mouth as she howled. He turned away from the obscenity of that sight, away from her blotchy face and swollen eyes and her cries, and walked in a straight line until he couldn't hear them any more. The path took him clear out the door.

He had no right to feel he'd lost anything, Aless thought as he stared into the darkening blue of twilight. He hadn't even lost Laylea, and she was all he had coming into this fight. But he'd lost her, and so Aless permitted himself one last wallow in unjustifiable feelings.

The End

Inspired by some fanarts on Pixiv. Leif/Nanna is an adorable and lovable pairing, but Aless/Nanna does have some intriguing things fueling it. I think it'd be a less positive relation for Nanna, in the long run... Aless is something of a pill even when he's reformed.