To Everything A Season
I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.
For a prompt at the fe_fest comm on LJ: Nyna and Camus, four ways it could've gone and one way it did.
slow fade (in which Nyna learns not to love)
In time, she forgot. Time did not heal, exactly, but it dulled all it touched, the pain and the happiness alike. Time bled away color and feeling, and the memories of her days in the palace- as a daughter, a prisoner, a lover- faded as a tapestry would beneath the sun. A grayness crept over her, a haziness akin to the curling mists of Aurelis that shrouded the castle spires and made its banners look like old rags.
She clung to Hardin's hand, if only to keep herself from dissolving and floating away.
When she heard that the brilliant young general of Grust had fallen from favor (on her account) Nyna looked at her hands and wondered if Camus still considered her worth the trouble. When she heard of his death upon the desolate fields of his motherland, she expected all the memories of their time together, the sweet and the bitter, would flare up in her heart once more. Instead, there was only the cold fog closing around her, a winding-sheet of the spirit.
She clung to Hardin's hand when he offered it again. In ten years, that moment would be as vague and colorless as all the rest.
surrender (in which Camus puts down his lance)
"I am sorry, Princess."
The words issued from a height she couldn't scale, a distance beyond the mere physical height of a tall man astride a tall horse. As he continued to speak, telling her of his king and his duty, of how he could not follow the voice of his own heart, Nyna clenched her fists in frustration
"Camus... I..."
I love you. I hate you. I don't know the difference anymore.
She did not truly hear what he was saying until he was on his knees before her. His lance- no, her father's lance- was buried head-first in the earth.
"Princess, I surrender."
"Oh..."
So he could not fight alongside them, but he might surrender... to her. That marvelous, stubborn, foolishly honorable man.
She placed her hand atop his fair head, heedless of the flecks of blood left there by the crescent-shaped gashes in her palm.
"I claim your life as my prisoner."
The word had never carried so many meanings.
zero sum (in which Camus does not)
"Stop! Camus!"
Her voice was lost upon the gale, the wind that tasted of salt and bitterness. Camus had lowered his visor, and instead of his golden hair and dark eyes, Nyna saw a mask of cold black metal. The words that came from it were muffled yet all too clear: A pity you had to waste your life.
They were not meant for her. Nyna, who could have joined the battle, could have wielded a staff or tome had she only been allowed it, watched as the duel she'd hoped to stop took place in spite of her. Her body felt wooden, felt rooted to the soil, and she heard the wind tear at her hair and her robes.
It was soon over, ended on the second blow with the sickening sound of the Gradivus striking true-tearing cloth, tearing flesh, shattering bone.
Her father always said it had the power to crush stone.
Nyna ran to the side of the youth she'd made her army commander, the youth she'd given this impossible task of uniting all Archanea under her banner... and the even more impossible task of reuniting her with Camus the Sable. But she came to him empty-handed, and when she called out his name only the wind gave an answer.
Nyna looked up from her bloodied hands, the bloodstained fabric of her shoes. Camus waited, a silent black figure upon his black steed, and it seemed she glimpsed his eyes through the slits in that terrible helm.
A crimson drop fell from the tip of the Gradivus and landed on the barren earth.
"Why?" Her throat burned with all the things she wanted to scream at him- your king's castle has fallen, his vows no longer bind you, my armies have every corner of your land. "They'll show you no mercy," she whispered at last.
"It is fate," he replied.
He rode into oblivion and left her with the wind and the bloodied dust.
fantasy (in which Nyna is happy)
The Empress sat upon her throne, her General ever at her side. They made such a comely couple, both tall and fair with hair like beaten gold. Their children, no doubt, would be the most beautiful in the land. Already, Empress Nyna and her consort were figures of legend- she, the brave and beautiful princess who never admitted defeat; he, the greatest warrior under heaven. Their love, it seemed, could bind and vanquish any darkness.
When the people of Archanea saw Empress Nyna and Lord Camus stand before them, they cheered as though the moon and the sun had come down to grace the earth with their presence. With the smiles they shared, they guaranteed a new age of peace. The kiss that sealed their union promised another six hundred years of glory to the Holy Kingdom, and Pales resounded with joy from its alleys to the highest of its marble domes.
reality (in which...)
She'd chased him to the very ends of the earth. She'd sought him in palaces, on battlefields, in temples and cemeteries. She found him at last in the marketplace, on an overcast morning of no special import. At first Nyna did not believe the sight- surely this man with the scarlet coat trimmed in gold, this man with a smile warming the cold beauty of his face- he could not be the Sable Knight.
And yet he was, vivid and alive. Vivid and alive as he pointed out curiosities to the curly-headed child in his arms, happy and smiling and achingly beautiful as the white-robed woman beside him placed a loving hand upon his arm.
Nyna shrank behind one of the market stalls, shielding herself with a stack of cheap earthenware pots.
Camus was not hers. Camus no longer was. This man, this happy man with the bright clothes and bright smile, had stepped from her story into his own.
Nyna ground her nails into her palms until the blood welled up in the gashes. The pain, the blood, was all she had to prove that she'd even existed.
The End
A/N: So, in the first possibility, Nyna marries Hardin and moves on with her life. She might not be happy, but things don't end in a massive war. In the second, Nyna "claims" Camus (an echo of her "capture" of Horace in FE11) and things might have a happy ending. In the third, Camus forces a Game Over and it's anyone's guess what happens next. In the fourth, Nyna takes Camus back with her to Pales after the War of Heroes. In the fifth, however, Nyna chases "Sirius" to Valencia, only to encounter Camus/Zeke/Sirius with his lover Teeta and their family.
Nyna just can't win.