Arcadia
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
This was inspired, in part, by the X-files episode entitled "Arcadia" that aired in 1999. The episode was not a very good one. I hope this 'fic will prove better.
Eirika kept glancing down at her hands during the drive. The ring on her left hand fit comfortably enough, but she wasn't used to its presence. The flash of its steel-blue diamond kept catching her off-guard. And her wrist felt naked, even after days of not wearing the bracelet.
"Waite, Seth and Erina," she heard him say as the window to the guardhouse slid open. Eirika continued to look down so that the guard, if curious, could see her only in profile. That was silly; this was the last place Eirika ought to feel on edge. And yet...
"Welcome home, Mr. and Mrs. Waite."
Eirika forced herself to make eye contact and smile. The guard, a woman with an untidy bob of red hair, looked a little bored. That lessened Eirika's tension just a little; she felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the guard- was her name Cecile? It must be a dull job, saying hello and goodbye to an endless parade of faces each day.
As the gates to Arcadia Springs closed behind their sedan, Eirika made herself smile. She'd learned at university that a smile, even a deliberate one, boosted one's level of reported happiness. And here in Arcadia Springs, Erina Waite had no reason not to be happy.
Eirika noticed a few flecks of greenish light, the first fireflies of summer, as Seth drove through the labyrinth of short streets to their house. This was a different climate zone than the one she'd called home; already Eirika noticed orange and yellow lilies and the creamy bells of yucca blossom in their neighbors' yards. She'd already marked their house as "the one opposite the rose garden" because of the profusion of white roses blooming across the street. The roses seemed almost luminous in the dusk.
The house at 804 Sofia Cove had no roses in its front yard. The yard was green, the green of hedges and perennials and a cherry tree gone out of blossom. Green and alive and yet somehow sterile, not quite untidy enough. Eirika wondered if there was anything she might do to fix that, though she wasn't sure where to begin.
The car had stopped, the engine gone quiet, and Seth was holding the door for her.
"Thank you, dear," she said softly. Not loud enough to be heard by their neighbors, anyway.
They walked inside, and Eirika put the takeaway box of her half-eaten dinner into the refrigerator. With that done, she looked around at her almost-spotless, virtually unused kitchen. Everything she might have wanted was there, right down to the marble cutting board and the hand-towels edged in lavender and periwinkle. All wedding gifts, of course. But she couldn't remember the department store they'd registered with; Erina ought to remember, shouldn't she?
"I'm going to put on some tea," she said aloud, and without waiting for Seth to respond, she switched on the stove. The blue flames looked like a lotus blossom as they sprang out of the dark.
They took the tea together in the kitchen; Eirika liked hers pale golden with a splash of milk, and Seth preferred tea brewed for so long it was nearly as dark as coffee. Eirika had learned that one already; it was a good detail to know about her husband. It stuck with her, when she couldn't yet remember his mother's maiden name or the name of the church he'd attended before they ended up in Arcadia Springs.
Maybe she remembered it because that detail was genuine, and not cooked up in a government office.
Eirika tried a little light reading before she went to bed, but everything she had on hand- a murder mystery, a spy thriller, a romance novel with an iridescent cover- made her feel sour. She wondered briefly what kind of books "Erina" would gravitate toward, then announced that she was going to bed. Seth didn't need to follow her; she knew that he had paperwork to do. He saw her upstairs anyway, at least to the threshold of the master bedroom. She stood there in the doorway, swaying a little on her feet as uncertainty gripped her. Should she kiss him on the cheek? On the lips? Was anyone watching them now?
Seth answered the question for her.
"Good night, Miss Eirika."
With this, he shut the door, leaving her alone amid the spare elegance of dark wood against turquoise and ivory hangings. Eirika sat on the edge of the bed that Erina and her husband were meant to share and wondered, not for the first time, how Seth truly felt about this arrangement. Not that he ever complained; it was not in some men to complain, or even to question.
Or, at times, to explain.
Eirika did not complain, not aloud, but she could not help but to... to question. She rose and walked over to the mirrored vanity, where her real jewelry box sat adjacent to its reflection. Perhaps that was "Erina's" jewelry box there in the mirror, with Erina's hand reaching for it out of the mirror-world. No, it couldn't be Erina's; the box was solely Eirika's, a decorated egg of pale blue satin studded with beads. It seemed too childish for the room. Eirika lifted the lid, then took out the top tray of rings and earrings. Beneath that, in the second tray, lay a bracelet with one large amethyst. She ached to put it on, and after a moment she gave into temptation and put the bracelet back where it belonged. It would do her no harm to sleep with it, as long as she remembered to take it off in the morning.
"Ephraim... Father..." She closed the box so gently that she couldn't even hear the whisper of cloth upon cloth as the lid fastened. "What am I doing here?"
To Be Continued...
A/N: Yep. Eirika and Seth in a relocation program, pretending to be something they're not in the beautifully secure gated community of Arcadia Springs. What could possibly go wrong?