Homecomings

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

Warnings: This takes place a very long time after the game. A lot of canon characters are dead, some of them in ways that are not very nice. All pairings herein are canon, or at least enough so to pass. Spoilers for FE3: Monshou no Nazo; knowledge of FE3 may be a plus in reading this. This 'fic has a prequel, "Forsaken," but both stories are intended as stand-alones.

*****

Chapter One: Guilt

I don't claim to be guilty-- guilty's too grand

They called it Old Abel's Bench. After he'd been there for three summers, the villagers of Hekla even put a small brass plaque on the back of the bench, just to let visitors know for certain this was Old Abel's favorite spot. So, if he had nothing else to his name, there at least was one place left in Archanea for him to rest. His bedroom at Father Asgrimur's house did not count as a place of his own. As a veteran of the Great Wars, he was entitled to the charity, and he was not allowed to turn it down. It was accept aid or die in the street of this tidy fishing village, and the villagers would not permit the latter. So he lived his days in the house of the local priest, half prisoner and half honored guest. When he thought it over-- and he had nothing now but time to think his life over-- Abel felt that this sort of sentence really was appropriate. Exile in this archipelago so isolated it was termed the Lonely Isles, under the watchful eye of Father Asgrimur... no, a better punishment could not have been devised. Time and fate managed what temporal justice could not, and conspired to have an old traitor wither away at the edge of the kingdom.

In truth, he doubted he could survive another winter in this clime. The prospect had ceased to bother him much. Seven years he'd been there now, watching the gray seas lash at this isolated heap of rocks. Seven years in which time seemed to slow, then stop entirely, and he lived the same day over and over. Seven years of remaining still while the fishermen cast their nets and the foreigners in their long boats came ashore to do business with fur-traders. From his bench, he watched the foreigners with dim eyes; not a few years earlier, he'd have gone up to them, asked them their origins, then asked of them that eternal searing question.

This woman, have you seen her? And he would take from his belt-pouch a sketch in made many years before. She is a little more than five feet in height, small-boned and very slender. She comes from Macedon, but knows the Common Tongue as well as her own language. Her smile and her laugh are both beautiful. Her name is Est, and she is my wife.

He no longer asked the question aloud, though it burned in his heart. The sketch of his lost love remained tucked away out of sight, and he let the foreigners pass without accosting any.

Yet time and fate, it seemed, had one more trial for Abel, onetime knight of the Kingdom of Altea. Her voice attracted his attention first; it broke through the steady flow of re-lived memory as he sat on his bench beneath the weak northern sun. Low and clear, it had a strain of music in it, one that conjured up memories of olive groves and thyme-scented meadows, white marble under the moonlight and great mountains rising from the blue southern seas. It was an echo of the voice he still heard in his daydreams. Abel raised his head to follow that voice, and so he saw her.

It was no delusion. Four decades on, he still knew her small, trim figure. The short, glossy hair was shot through with feathers of white and gray, but that was no surprise.

Her voice was lower than he remembered, and considerably more harsh. That, too, failed to bother him. Only when she turned, and he caught sight of her face, did he feel the true shock of the years. Catria the White was nineteen no longer. To see her bright-blue eyes set in a face darkened by the sun and creased by the wind provoked in him more than animal revulsion; it was the same feeling a good man might experience upon seeing a shrine despoiled.

Est would look that way, he thought. He had often tried to imagine how his wife would now look, but always the image of her remained elusively girlish; his concept of an aging Est more resembled the silver-haired maidens one encountered from time to time. The reality of Catria grown old shattered his vague conception of what Est might be in this era. Est might have those sun-spots on her hands, Est would have lined skin drawn tight across her collarbone, Est would have those spiderweb veins in her neck....

Yet Catria remained herself, bold and proud and strong. In his other lifetime, that long-vanished life in which he'd been a noble knight and she'd been his comrade-at-arms, he would have been grateful to see her. Steady, reliable Catria, now closing in on him, her eyes alight with a predator's gleam. Catria, whose path had almost crossed with his so many times during the years that divided them. Her short-sword remained in its scabbard, but it was not necessary. She moved with the vigor of a woman far younger, while he had trouble even standing unaided. Abel did not attempt to evade her; he remained on his bench like a man already wounded and awaiting the Harvester of Souls. It would be the middle sister to find him, he thought. Not the one who took him as her husband, not the one who was his dear friend, but the one whose heart and loyalties lay elsewhere. From her, he could expect no mercy.

Not that he wanted any such thing.

"You have me now," he whispered, an echo of her old battle cry.

"As is fitting. I promised I'd be the one to find you," she said, and traced the scar that ran down from the base of his left ear. "And, unlike you, I've never breached a promise made to my king."

In that other lifetime, he would have lifted a skeptical eyebrow and asked her how she reckoned that statement with her rebellion against Michalis. But they both knew Michalis of Macedon wasn't the king that Catria had in mind.

"Unfortunately, the reward for your return has long since been rescinded. You are no longer a person of interest to the Crown." The corners of her mouth quirked up in a smile that once had heralded the infamous three-fold attack of the Whitewinged Sisters. "Yet, strangely, you remain a person of deep interest to me, Brother Abel."

*

Father Asgrimur was very honored to leave his guest in the care of the distinguished Knight Commander. The memory of the man called the Hero King flourished even in this distant fringe of the kingdom he had forged, and to have the fabled Knight Commander, she who had been to the king as his own left hand.... well, the priest was beside himself at the honor. So Abel was released at last, released like a prisoner passed in custody from one captor to another.

"Don't offer me your apologies," Catria said; even in a verbal match, she had to strike first. "Apologize to the dead, if you must, but I don't need to hear it."

He had no apologies for her, or for anyone else. He did thank Father Asgrimur as the priest handed Abel the sack containing his worldly goods. The priest sent him off with a blessing, as though Abel were headed to a better place than the one he was leaving. Abel had no illusions in this regard.

"I am not bringing you back because I pity you," said his new warden. "I keep my promises." And she strapped him to the back of her dragon and carried him away from the Lonely Isles. Abel felt no grief as he looked back on the place he'd lived for so many years; it never was home. Home did not exist, he told himself. Home was a little house with a little shop on a modest street of Altea Town, a house with rose-bushes outside and Est within. Home disappeared when the first rock came through his window, disappeared when Est unwrapped the paper wadded around that rock and read aloud the message "TRAITOR" to him. Catria was not bringing him anywhere except another way-station of his exile.

"In light of your advanced state of decay, we'll take warp points down to Khadein," Catria shouted at him as they soared above the white-capped Northern Ocean.

"Warp points?" His voice must not have been loud enough, as she did not answer him. Back on the mainland, on a curving peninsula that jutted like a flipper from the northeastern lobe of the continent, they stopped at a temple dedicated to a local water deity. Abel had vague memories of the temple, as he'd passed through it on the journey that led to his extended stay on Hekla. He had not visited the large pavilion to which Catria now led him; he just had time to realize that its mosaic floor formed the star design of a warp spell when his body began to disintegrate.

Abel felt his innards twist as his body came back together. He'd felt the immense strain of a long-distance warp before in his life, during the surreal trip from Macedon to Thabes to Dolhr. He'd been surprised then to have all his fingers and toes still attached upon arrival, and to have his viscera inside his body rather than dangling out. That, however, had not been nearly as painful as this. Behind him, Catria's war-dragon moaned; Abel glanced at his keeper to see how she fared. She looked as though she'd tasted a bitter orange while expecting a sweet one.

"Eh," she spat. "Horrible."

"Do people do this often?"

"When speed counts, they do. The system was set up for diplomats and the military, not for holiday jaunts."

"The military?"

"If any region of the kingdom suffers attack, aerial troops can be mobilized within three hours," Catria said, and a familiar touch of pride brightened her face. "Well, rest up for an hour or so, and then it's on to Khadein."

"Where is this place, then?" Abel tried to remember what command Catria had given the temple attendant before the warp, but it seemed he was at least missing a few seconds of memory.

"The New Temple at Thabes. I'm not surprised you don't recognize it; it was only consecrated a few years ago."

"Ah." Abel truly looked then at his surroundings; the walls and windows of the temple were adorned in a way that did seem peculiar to him. The content of the artwork was traditional-- the war between dragons and men, the founding of Archanea, the first rise of Dolhr, and so on-- but the colors and the design were odd. It was modern, he supposed, and at the back of it all he simply didn't care. "Do people get lost this way? I mean, does everyone always have their body come back together properly?"

"We haven't lost anyone yet. The magical community is divided on whether over-reliance on warp magic weakens the body and leads one to a premature demise," she said. "In your case, I don't think the odds are against us."

Her own face was its normal color again. Abel watched Catria as she soothed her dragon; the beast didn't seem to have appreciated their shortcut much, either. Neither the dragon nor Abel liked the second warp, which spirited them to Khadein, any better.

"It's a nice hop from here to Altea, not worth the trouble of warp magic," Catria said as she helped Abel to put his riding-harness back on. Abel nodded in mute reply; the distance between the Khadein citadel and Altea Castle was comparatively short as the dragon flew. Though separated by water, sand, and culture, they were the closest in distance of any major cities on Archanea. In his mind's eye, Abel could see the straight lines drawn as though on a map, and something about this familiar geometry was oddly exciting. He tried to quash that feeling, and reminded himself that he was not going home. The Altea he remembered from the early years of the century was a place from a dream, and he could have no expectation of return. And yet, as they reached the coast of Khadein, he could not keep his heart from quickening. The sparkling waters of the Khadein Channel had meant something once; they'd been the final boundary crossed before retaking Altea from the Dolhr-Grust alliance. Abel struggled to keep his emotions flat and dead, and yet he stared, and stared, until he saw it-- the White Coast, sheer pale cliffs rising out of the water. Altea, the garden of the Western Isles, the land of golden apples, the jewel set in a silver sea.

As they flew closer, Abel saw that the timeless coastline was changed; he counted a dozen new strange towers upon the bluffs, octagonal structures of wood topped with spinning blades.

"Are they some kind of defense?"

"They're windmills, Abel."

"What purpose do they serve?" He could only imagine them to be some method of warding off enemy dragoons.

"Power," she said. "Wind powers most of the mills in Altea now."

"Where did the idea come from?"

"Merric was involved," she said in a vague manner that seemed to him deliberate. "I'm sure you can guess the rest if you give it some thought."

Abel had given no thought at all to the frail, cheerful youth who'd earned himself the name Master of the Winds, not for many years. He did not understand Catria in the least. She had no further explanation for him as they continued south toward the heart of the island. The land was blanketed with the flat gray clouds that were the mark of that season; the sensation of the wet air on his face stirred Abel's heart more than anything he'd heard or seen thus far. Some things, at least, hadn't changed; late-summer rains still kissed the fertile Altean soil. Catria took them down through a hole in the clouds, and so Abel had his first glimpse of the land itself, of the orchards and the fields of ripening grain. And, so it happened, of the capital. Shafts of sunlight pierced the fog, outlining what seemed to be a palace of pure light. The old castle was swallowed up by a vast complex of gleaming marble. The stone tower Abel had twice fled and twice captured now appeared to frown upon the newer structures around it. It was like one of those fantastic dishes served at a banquet, half a suckling pig sewn to a fowl.

"When was all this done?"

"Well, the old place looked a bit ragged and gloomy after the wars. Besides, when Her Majesty came over from Valencia, she wanted something a bit more cheerful."

Valencia. One of the many places Abel had always meant to see, but never managed the journey. It had taken him too long, and taken too much out of him, just to travel across the continent of Archanea. The phantasm of paths never taken haunted him for a moment, but when he again looked down at the ground, all thought of lost Valencia was jarred out of his mind. He knew the landscape of Altea intimately, could draw a map of his motherland from memory. He'd scribbled such maps many times over-- on scraps of parchment, table-tops, and in the dust. It all was fixed in his mind: the sinuous curves of the bays and estuaries, the narrow bridge to Gra in the east, the castle west of that, and then the Twin Villages. Abel knew the terrain as well as he knew the veins and seams of his own hand.

He did not recognize the country beneath him now. The outline was there, the rivers and the glittering sea, but the land had undergone transformation. The Twin Villages were now a single mass of buildings and people; Altea Town itself flowed into Javea Town like two beads of quicksilver becoming one.

"Welcome to Altea City," she said as they swooped low.

"There must be hundreds of thousands of people here now."

"The last census had a little over a million," Catria said, in the dry tone she might use to report on the weather.

"A million." Even Pales didn't number a million residents, not after the wars. Not that Abel remembered. The population of all Archanea at the turn of the century had been... was it forty million? Or fifty? "How is that even possible?"

"Refugees flooded in after the War of Heroes. They reckoned Altea might be rebuilt a bit faster than the surrounding nations, and they were right." That strange prideful smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "People also tended to large families after the war."

"War of Heroes?"

"Oh. That's the correct name for what we called Emperor Hardin's War."

Her teeth, Abel noted absently, were still white and appeared almost sharp. She clicked them for emphasis when she spoke, as an irritated horse would chomp at the bit.

Catria took them down at the outskirts of Altea City. A small knot of onlookers, drawn by the sight of the war-dragon, already waited there. These women and children greeted Catria as a returning heroine.

"Welcome home, Commander!"

Home. Abel had never in all his life thought of Altea as Catria's home. She was Catria of the Whitewinged Order of Macedon, and her home lay still further to the south, beyond the sparkling blue waters of the Raman Sea.

"Who's the gentleman, then, Commander?" one lad of twelve or so called.

"A visitor from the Lonely Isles." Catria spoke the lie as easily as she breathed, but then again it wasn't truly a lie. Abel held silence and let Catria do all of the talking; better to let these people think him a barbarian unschooled in the Common Tongue than to have them find out he was a native son of Altea.

*

Catria did not take Abel to her house, if truly she kept residence in Altea. She found him a cottage by the sea, in a small village reminiscent of the towns of his youth. There was a baker's and a butcher's, a tanner's, a smithy, and an apothecary's shop. A single healer, a motherly cleric, tended a simple shrine and burial ground. His cottage had but three rooms, enough to serve his basic needs-- a place to sleep, and to break his fast, and to sit and gaze at the walls.

"This is not charity," she said to him, and her voice was as sharp then as her lance-head. "You are my charge."

He could not argue with her duty any more than he could argue with the compassion of Father Asgrimur. To place oneself between Catria and her duty had always been suicide, and while it was tempting to imagine himself obliterated by Catria's will, Abel knew she wouldn't grant him the mercy of literal death. He would have to wait for it, as he'd waited out the years in Hekla, forever in a state of longing without hope.

Abel was received warmly by the people of Denia, and in truth he felt oddly comfortable there. It was, in many ways, a fragment of what Altea Town had been in his youth, back when he was merely the attractive and clever son of the town cleric, a boy destined for something beyond the village walls. He had a plausible story for the townspeople-- he was but another old soldier who traveled widely after the War of Heroes, and who now in his waning days was glad to be home. Like the best lies, it hewed closely to the truth. He gave them his real name, and was as surprised as he was relieved to see no flash of recognition, no sudden burst of suspicion, in the eyes of his neighbors. Perhaps Abel the Black had simply been forgotten.

Catria came to visit at irregular intervals. She brought something different each time-- a chess set, an illustrated copy of The Fall of Thabes, a box of sweetmeats. Abel stared at the gem-like green plums boiled in sugar and wondered that Catria remembered, after so many years, that he was partial to green sugarplums. Catria also brought along news, though most of it was fragmentary and elliptical-- anecdotes of court squabbles between officials Abel didn't know, or snatches of overseas gossip. Abel did not know why he should be concerned about the scandal of a Valencian general who kept two wives, unless Catria meant it as some veiled insult toward him over the way he'd once been entangled with both of her sisters. Mostly, he listened to the sound of her voice, and didn't concern himself with the meaning of the words. After all the years between them, she still had enough of a Macedonian accent that hearing her speak summoned up memories-- memories of the young Catria and her sisters, ardent knights in service to the warrior princess of a long-fallen kingdom. Once the gates of memory opened, more buried thoughts fluttered up from the dark, like moths out of a rarely-opened chest. Abel found his daydreams filled not just the singular figure of Est, but with his old comrades-at-arms. Sometimes he was haunted by memories of his former lord-- not as a mighty king, but as a prince just past the threshold of childhood, accompanied always by his little playfellow the princess Caeda. More often, Abel thought of his peers: idealistic Gordin, sensible Draug, and solemn, stubborn, perplexing Cain. Men of legend, now, great knights who helped to reshape the broken world under the Hero King... yet in Abel's eyes, they too were still little more than children. Little brothers, especially Cain, who'd been to Abel what Catria had been to her elder sister Palla-- ally and rival and worth taking a killing blow for.

It would have been easy to slip into "Remember when?" around her, but Catria steadfastly refused to allow him that indulgence. Whatever place Catria called home, she did not speak of it, much less bring him over to visit. She revealed to him nothing of her past or her history, whether she'd ever married or taken a lover. At times, it amused him to imagine what she might be up to when not with him-- visiting children and grandchildren, perhaps. And working, of course, carrying out her considerable duties as Knight Commander. She certainly left the impression of a woman with a great deal upon her plate to savor; Abel knew the moments spent with him were but the crumbs.

And yet, for all that, he found himself rather glad to see her marching up to his door.

"There's a lot of bother in the streets this week," he greeted her one day when the ground was carpeted in yellow leaves and the afternoon sun dipped low in the west.

"Oh, everyone's preparing for the Star Festival." She presented him with a knitted scarf of soft wool patterned green and black. "That's from a Valencian camel. They keep herds of camels with long hair and no humps-- nasty spitting things."

"Star Festival?"

"New holiday," Catria replied, in the clipped tone she used when holding something back.

"When is it?"

"Tomorrow. I'll be taking you into town." In a slightly softer voice, she added, "If you must see anything in your life, you'll see this."

The next morning, Catria took him, with his new scarf and walking-stick, into Altea City. It seemed to Abel like the million-strong inhabitants of his former hometown had all taken to the streets. Barren tree branches fluttered with tinsel and ribbons, while the celebratory throng waved both the new flag of the Unified Kingdom and the old royal standard of Altea. A plaza that had been a simple paved space in his youth now boasted statues to Altea's heroes in every corner; in its center stood the marble figure of a boy with his sword raised to the heavens. That much Abel could discern, as the rest of the statue was smothered by chains of paper flowers in a dozen shades of blue. Abel lowered his gaze and then saw the inscription at the statue's base. Many of the letters were obscured by the heaped garlands, but he did his best to piece the message together.

N TH EL TH DAY O E ELEVE H M H O 4

CE TH AN IS FOR FR D AL OM THE GR F LHR

"Of course. Liberation Day." The eleventh day of the eleventh month, 604. How could the date have ever slipped his mind? He relieved the memory in a flash-- a banner torn down from above the Altean throne, and a new banner raised, and a boy standing at a balustrade with one hand raised to greet his people. Abel's head turned, as though of its own accord, so that he might look at the statue, at the marble sword held forever aloft.

"The statue's wrong. It was months between retaking Altea and getting our hands on Falchion."

"I know. I was there," said Catria. "Try telling anyone that and see the reaction you get."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I wasn't invited to be on the Statue Committee." The acid in her voice would have curdled fresh milk. "It's ancient history, Abel. History, or... myth."

"Myth," he repeated to himself. Half-truth and legend, like the tale of King Adrah and the stories of ancient Thabes. But those myths were centuries in the making, fragments of song passed from one bard to another until no one alive could untangle truth from poetic fiction. How many passing though this plaza had been there, only a few decades before, been there when that boy-prince waved to them from the heights of his recaptured castle? Abel looked down at his hands and wondered how long he'd truly been gone.

He did notice Catria had slipped, though, and called him by his name, whereas up to now she'd referred to him only as "Brother" when they were in public. They did not speak again for a time; Abel waged a silent battle in his head against a series of memories-- white pegasus feathers against white clouds, the silver flash of a rapier blade, the sensation of his own blood coursing down his neck. He glanced at Catria, and though his eyes saw the sunburnt old woman she was, his imagination saw her as she'd nearly been forever-- a girl dashed against the stones of the Dragon's Altar, eyes rolling back in her head as she mouthed the name that Abel never wanted to hear again. In this age of miracles, the dead girl on the temple floor could rise again to be the companion at his shoulder, who now hummed to herself a tune that nagged at some still more dusty corner of Abel's mind. He was on the verge of asking her to stop when a bustle in the vicinity of the royal dais drew everyone's attention.

"Ah, there's Princess Ismene. She's a good girl, brave and clever. Reminds me of someone I used to know."

Abel then asked Catria how intimately she knew the royal family these days, and she ignored him. The princess gave a speech; Abel, standing at the back of the crowd, could hardly make out a word of it. He took her in with his eyes alone, and saw the young princess had a great deal of poise and charm. She looked to be about sixteen years of age, and Abel noted a clear resemblance to Caeda in her face. He also took note of the exquisitely-worked hilt of the rapier at her belt.

"She uses a sword?" he asked Catria once the ceremony was over.

"Of course. She may be called upon to wield Falchion one day."

He just stared at her. In all the years since St. Anri founded Altea, the Sword of Light had never once been used by a woman.

"Times have changed," she said briskly.

"That much, eh?"

"Even Lord Gotoh sees the value of bending his rules now and again."

"Sees? Gotoh's still alive?" The man had been elderly even in 605, surely by now even the Archsage must have passed to dust.

"He's a divine dragon, Brother. Their kind don't age and die as we do. Tiki doesn't look a day above ten even now."

"Tiki. Dear gods." He had not thought of the manakete child, or her disarming and wounding innocence, in years. "Where are they, now?"

"Traveling," she said, again in that deliberately vague fashion. Then her face brightened, and she said in a tone that was altogether different, "The Carpenter's Guild is serving free ale, if you're interested."

"I'll take free ale," he said. It would be nice to have one thing in his stomach not paid for by Catria's graces.

"It'll be crowded," she said, as though to warn him off. "Free ale and a chance to gawk at the Hall is more than most can pass up."

He did not understand the second half of her sentence at that time. He understood well enough once they stood before the massive and ostentatious doors of the Guildhall.

"It's as large as a palace," he said.

"It's the greatest private building on the continent," she replied. "Before the wars, Altea's wealth was in its fish and soil. Trade and commerce are king now, and the carpenters princes, ever since Caeda brought over shipbuilders from Talys."

Inside, the Guildhall proved still more astonishing. The ceiling was unlike anything Abel ever had seen; it was made of tiers of interconnected arches, gilded and dripping with ornamentation.

"Is that magic?"

"What?" Catria looked ceiling-ward. "Oh, the roof? No, there's no magic involved."

"How did they get all that up there?"

"Our carpenters are the best in the world. Now, stop asking silly questions and move along with the line."

Abel continued to glance up every few steps. The airy, gilded ceiling seemed to be floating, and it appeared impossible for such a delicate structure to hold up the weight of the roof.

A crowd of guildsmen up on an elevated platform bowed to an elderly man who wore the deep-blue robes of an Altean civil minister. The robes themselves were plain, but the golden chain around his neck gave indication of his true rank. One of the guildsmen passed a goblet, as ridiculously elaborate as the ceiling, to the minister, who sipped just enough for the sake of courtesy. Something in that carefully calibrated gestured seemed familiar to Abel somehow, as did the man's hair-- pure-white, tufted and unruly despite his high status. The truth sang out in his brain just as the minister turned in Abel's direction; Abel was far too tall to duck from the other man's gaze. He slumped his shoulders, lowered his face, and made himself as unassuming as possible. After so many years of hiding, he could be near to invisible when he needed it. He was nearly feeling safe when Catria's voice went off in his ear.

"Don't dally, Brother. There are many waiting their turn behind us."

For all that he'd anticipated the free ale, Abel hardly tasted it when it was given to him. When they reached the street again, Abel felt overcome by the noise and fatigue. His joints pained him; elbows, knees, and ankles all begged for a rest. He sank down on a granite block that served as the base to yet another grand statue, and let his walking stick fall aside. It did him little good, after all. He sat for a time, staring at the passers-by. A pair of young boys in white uniforms scurried past; one collected litter from the streets while the other swept the pavement. A street vendor shouted of "fresh-cut sticks of Sofian sugarcane" in a Grustian accent. Two dozen young girls in matching blue tunics walked past him; each girl had an identical cluster of paper flowers pinned to her shoulder. Abel watched, spellbound, as the girls marched up the steps of a building he didn't know, another built in a style he didn't recognize. Above the doors gilded letters read, "Queen Liza Memorial School for Girls."

The doors shut fast behind the last of the girls, and Abel forced himself to speak.

"Cain is alive."

"Oh, so you did see him," she said, all breezy nonchalance. "Yes, he's alive. We're not the only relics drifting around."

"He's the Chancellor?" Abel thought he recognized the chain of office with its heavy golden seal.

"And will be until he draws his last breath. He's the indispensable man of these times. Our king is not the man his father was, but thanks to Cain, it doesn't much matter."

"It sounds as though he hasn't changed much," Abel said, and managed a chuckle that sounded more than a little rusted. He felt a flood of deep relief now at the knowledge that his old companion was yet a part of this world.

"All of us change, Brother. The living more so than the dead, to be fair about it." She was looking away from him, down the street back to the main plaza; Abel turned to follow her gaze and decided she was staring at the flower-bedecked statue.

"I don't think he saw me."

"You're dead to him, Abel. Best to stay that way."

She began to walk, and he had no choice but to follow, heedless of the pain in his leg. Catria took a circuitous route, as though she intended Abel to see as much of the city as possible before he was brought back home. As they went, Catria again hummed the tune to herself, and Abel once felt he was on the verge of placing it. It escaped him, though, and instead he decided to ignore Catria in favor of the wonders around him.

"Royal College of Healing," he said aloud as they passed one splendid new building. He recognized the symbol above the door to be the personal badge of Princess Elice of Altea. She had talked of founding a school, and this must surely be it.

"It's the local campus," Catria supplied. "There are branches in Aurelis and Macedon as well. Linde teaches at the College in Aurelis."

"Linde?"

"Light Mages live twice as long as the average man, did you know? To look at Linde, you'd imagine her to be no more than forty."

Abel shook his head; the Linde of his memories was half again as young, a graceful sylph with chestnut hair and a radiant complexion.

"She doesn't take on female apprentices anymore," Catria continued. "She likes the young men, Mistress Linde does."

He decided to ignore her comments.

"I was wondering... the shop, the house where Est and I lived...."

"If you wish to see the place, Abel, you'll need the courage to find it yourself. I won't take you there."

***End Chapter One***

Author's Notes:

Well, this is the "final" installment of "Tales of the Unified Kingdom," my interconnected FE3/FEDS stories. Though chronologically last as far as the narrative goes, this is the one I started writing first, and it really can be read first. "Forsaken," which covers Abel's life up to his exile in Hekla, is the prequel to this, while "Sketches from Valencia" shows the young Catria and her sisters. Anyway, this is part one of two (and the second part is already finished... I just wanted to wait a bit between them). More detailed notes to go up on my DA account, my LJ account, and at the end of Chapter Two (Angel).

Epigraph from "The Law" by Leonard Cohen.