This is a oneshot. Hopefully, you will find this story at least just a little bit angsty. All reviews will be appreciated for your time. Flames will be heard. Constructive criticism will be listened to. (Psst, there's a difference!)
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Disclaimer: Fire Emblem and all officially associated characters do not belong to me.
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"What if everybody could live forever?"
Mist repeatedly blinked. "Huh?"
This was an odd turn in their conversation, she thought.
Rolf had stopped stringing his bow. He stared at the ground and seemed to have forgotten why he was holding a dismantled bow in his hands.
"I used to think about that all the time. I thought it'd be neat." Rolf continued in a toneless voice. "There wouldn't be any more problems in the world, I thought. The world would be good and everyone could live and be happy."
Somehow those words settled into the pit of her stomach. Her eyes watered and she sat numbly on the ground. Mist awkwardly hugged her knees to herself. Maybe it would make the words go away.
"Nobody would have to die. Nobody would have to mourn. Nobody would have to be sad... A perfect place to grow up and live together with everyone."
Tears stung the corners of her eyes. She hoarsely whispered, "It can't happen."
The bow clattered to the ground, wood meeting stone. The string fell in a tangled heap on the ground. Rolf stared at the bow and string, contemplating their function.
"No. It can't. It never will, not even if you lived forever."
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Ashnard's crazed smile lit up as he dealt a hard blow to Ike. Rolf cried out and started to rush to his side but Ike stopped him with a gesture of his hand.
'Don't come any closer, Rolf. I won't let you get hurt by this madman.'
Ashnard's wyvern let out a chilling screech that echoed through the empty halls. Rolf trembled. The king's eyes held a malevolent light, one that throttled you with a simple glance. Rolf trembled. He looked as though he would break forth into some twisted scream meant to resemble laughter at any moment. Rolf trembled. The Daein king's eyes rested on Rolf and Ike slashed him down in that moment.
Mad as he was, Ashnard's cold hard eyes stayed fixed to Rolf. He was condescendingly grinning even as he fell to his death. He smiled even as his blood painted the roughly-hewn stone tiles. It stained Rolf's memory.
Rolf trembled.
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"I used to think that if everyone could live forever time would solve everything for us." His hands rested in his lap. Tense fingers clutched the fabric of his shorts into folds that met at his knees.
Mist's eyes glazed over. She spoke. "Sometimes I wonder if I could've gone on living with father and Ike and you and all the others like a family that was still whole."
Rolf's hands started to shake at the intensity with which he gripped his shorts. "Then if we could've lived forever we could've been together and enjoyed our lives without worrying. I thought that if a person lived forever then they would become happy eventually. I thought that maybe they'd forget how to hate. Maybe they'd forget how to be sad."
The cleric started to fidget with her knuckles. She picked her words carefully. "That... is hard. Some things are just too...too..."
"Too hard to forget?"
She sighs. "It's... different from not forgetting. Some things are too...too easy to remember." Mist quickly flashed a half-hearted smile at Rolf. "I'm sorry. I'm not making sense, am I?"
He shook his head. "No. I understand."
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What he saw in that tower was beyond anything he ever thought possible. The stench which had just moments before immobilized him went unnoticed. Before his eyes, a horrible scene revealed a morbid glory.
He turned his eyes from the sight but in his panic he found himself facing more of it. The walls seemed to close in on him. He couldn't escape. Crusted blood on the walls tried to depict the despair, hopelessness and pain that was harboured here. Wherever he dared look there were voiceless screams etched onto... their... their faces. Faces that weren't quite... faces...
He tried to run, to run from these corpses with their obscure faces, to run from any remaining thoughts of what he saw, to run away from the presence of the tower.
Suddenly, it felt like he was trying to run on thin air. He tripped and sprawled across the floor. He got to his knees when he found himself staring into the face of another corpse. It was frozen like a mask, a decrepit mouth screaming to be answered.
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Rolf picked up his bow again. "I'm an archer. I try to kill people."
Following immediately after him, Mist said, "I'm a cleric. I try to save people. But I don't succeed as often as I'd like."
A curt answer and a wry smile followed from the archer's lips. "I succeed too often. If I had never killed before then maybe it would be easier to live forever."
"And it would help if nobody wanted to do bad things," said Mist. "But they do."
Wordlessly his fingers fixed one end of the string to one end of the bow. He had done this many times now. Soon he'd be done. Soon he'd have a weapon in his hands. "Then we have to do bad things to them so they won't be able to do bad things to us."
She quietly glanced at the Rolf's nearly-formed bow. "It's scary... Some people are really good at doing bad things... without being sorry."
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When Mist saw the blade, the blade saw her. Light glinted at the point as though it was a metallic torch. She felt mesmerized by the power of its sway and the pattern it drew in the air. She didn't notice it coming towards her until it collided with Ike's sword. The sound startled her and she started to take a few tentative steps backward.
Even as her brother strained with every inch of his being he managed to cry, 'Get... out... of... HERE!'
She couldn't find the strength in her legs to move. The Black Knight stared levelly ahead as though he did this often. He acted like it was some monotonous routine to fight someone, to kill them and watch their body fall and to wipe blood off the guilty blade. His shadowed gaze had a tangible weight. Mist felt some sort of unseen pressure on her throat.
Ike cried out again. 'NOW!'
Shamefully she ran. In her mind she knew that her brother might die, die by the edge of that sword. She also knew that she didn't want to look back at the blade. It sought her blood.
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Mist smiled in a way that she didn't know she could smile. It was sad and wistful. "I guess it might actually be worse if people could live forever."
She wiped off the remnants of her tears. Rolf sat silently. He tested his bow to make sure that it was properly stringed. It twanged reasonably well.
"Look at me," he said. "I've used this bow to kill people three times my size and age. For all I know, they were simply being used. They probably left behind family and friends who are waiting for them to return."
Sniffle. Her tears showed up in splotches on her sleeves as she tried to wipe them again. "But they could wait forever. Live forever and wait forever so that they could be sad forever. They'd spend their forevers with one less loved one."
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Draped like a rag doll, her father's body hung across Ike's shoulders. She remembered asking Ike if he was very badly injured. She asked him if he put any pressure on his bleeding. She asked him if father was conscious. She asked him if there was anything she could do to help. She asked him if she should run ahead and get Rhys to meet him part of the way.
While she kept up her barrage of questions Ike kept silent and simply continued to walk back to the camp. Father's cape brushed the grass. Gloved fingers were limp and swayed without resistance. Blood mingled with the rain and seeped into the dirt within moments.
Mist continued to follow her brother, desperate for any sign that her father would be okay. After a while, she slowed down. She stopped in her tracks and stood there as Ike walked on. Time stopped, like it was waiting for her to say it.
She asked him if it was okay to cry for their father.
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Rolf handed Mist a handkerchief. She thanked him and used it. The archer ran several scenarios through his head, frowning more with each passing thought. Is it even possible to make the world a happy place?
After a moment of silence the two looked at each other. They smiled awkwardly like they were caught laughing at a funeral. Rolf tried a chuckle. "Listen to us. We've been through one measly war and we're rambling like old people."
Mist gave a tight-lipped smile. "Well, we're not kids either."
Instead of trying to find the right words to say both of them sat quietly without speaking to one another. Eventually, Rolf went out for target practice and Mist decided to do chores. Neither of them ever mentioned that particular conversation again.
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