Now the Struggle Has a Name

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

An fe_exchange story for blankspectrum (LJ) in response to the prompt "Eyvel: dissociation." Eyvel turns out to be so tricky to write this went through a whopping twelve attempts before I actually finished a draft. This does not outright spoil Eyvel's backstory but does drop some hints; it assumes the reader already knows who's who and who's what.

This takes place three years before the opening to Thracia 776. Contains children in a medieval-type setting drinking a very weak alcoholic brew- if you were OK with Butterbeer in Harry Potter you should be OK with this.

Nightfall

"Lords above, we give you thanks for the food upon our table. Bless the toil of those who produced it, bless the hands that prepared it and the guests who come to share with us tonight. In the name of blessed Ethnia and her servants..."

The prayer dated back to the days when all Thracia was one nation; the names "Dain" and "Nova" were tactfully left out so that neither side might be offended. So the people of Fiana hedged their bets, even when saying grace at the table.

Eyvel caught Mareeta's eye, and the two of them held back as their guests fell upon the bread and milk and fish porridge. "Fell upon" wasn't quite the word for it, though, Eyvel thought as she watched them. She saw the way the girl crossed her ankles upon sitting, the way the boy held his knife and fork. Worlds away from the manners that young Othin displayed when he came for a visit.

No ordinary children, she thought, and for a moment Eyvel felt the same strange sensation that had passed over her that afternoon, when young Lugh Faris stood outside the gates of Fiana and offered up the sword he claimed had been his mother's. Of course, an ordinary boy wouldn't have owned such a weapon, beautifully wrought and radiant with the signature of powerful magic. The sword, though, held her attention far less than the look in Lugh's eyes, proud and scared and angry and more than a little lost, yet without the feral look that Eyvel often saw in lost and angry little boys. That look awakened in Eyvel the same sense of kinship that she'd felt but once before, in the market where she'd found Mareeta.

I once stood where this boy stands. We are the same.

Eyvel still didn't know what Lugh, Nanna, and their father had been running from, or how close that threat might be behind them, but something in her heart said that tonight was no time to press two tired and hungry children with questions. Whatever peril lurked outside in the shadowed woods, they had shelter inside Fiana's walls. To Eyvel's surprise Mareeta followed her mother's lead and stayed remarkably quiet, though her dark eyes smoldered with curiosity.

"Mareeta won't mind sharing her room with you," Eyvel said once her small pair of visitors had eaten everything they could possibly eat and were both sitting back, sleepy-eyed. Lugh claimed to be twelve but looked younger, and Nanna was younger still- both young enough to make a nursery of Mareeta's room, at least for a little while.

Mareeta volunteered to start on the washing and so Eyvel took Lugh and Nanna upstairs. She caught Nanna's anxious glance toward the spare bedroom as they passed its closed door.

"Your father will be fine," Eyvel said, and she saw the twin looks of apprehension in their eyes. The had the eyes of children who didn't know anymore what it meant to be out of danger, Eyvel realized. But not children who had never known, who'd never been allowed to know what safety meant- and Eyvel had seen that, too. "He needs to sleep and so do the both of you."

She kept a firm grip on both their hands as she took them into Mareeta's room and showed them where they might sleep for the night. Nanna could stay with Mareeta in the bed while Lugh had a pallet on the floor. It was right for a boy to sacrifice a bit of comfort for his little sister, no?

"It's not fair for me to have the bed," Nanna said. "We can be on the floor together."

And so Nanna got her first lesson as to what life might be under Eyvel's roof- a bed for the girls and a pallet for Lugh. Lugh didn't seem to mind as he thanked Eyvel for giving them a place to sleep.

"Mareeta will be up shortly. Sleep well, both of you."

She touched Lugh's matted brown bangs, because it felt right to do it, and she saw a wet glint in his eyes right before they closed.

Mareeta was still washing up when Eyvel returned to the kitchen, and mother and daughter made a team effort of the remainder of the cleaning; Eyvel did want a little time alone with her daughter that night, so that Mareeta didn't feel put out by the presence of the boy with the strange sword, or the little girl with unusual golden hair. As they washed the plates and the soup kettle they talked of what Mareeta wanted to do a few days ahead- a trip to Ith, to buy new sandals and visit the seaside. Eyvel promised they'd indeed go to Ith three days hence; it seemed a good guess as to when things might settle down around their house, one way or another.

After she'd kissed Mareeta for the night and seen her off to bed (and Lugh and Nanna were sound asleep, as she'd expected), Eyvel knocked lightly on the door of the guest room.

"Come in, Lady Eyvel." Old Sabha's voice had a creak to it, like the hinge of a door that needed oiling.

The local crone was sitting alongside the bed, holding the healing staff that had been among little Nanna's belongings. Sabha had studied the way of the staff briefly, long years before, but never had used the skill. The people of the eastern shore had no resources to train their daughters to use such rare and expensive things- not sixty years ago, and not now- and Nanna's staff of exotic wood, gold filigree, and crystal could only be called expensive.

"I think I can feel my way through this if I need to," Sabha said now as she caressed the glossy orb atop the staff. "I haven't held something this fine in a long, long time."

"Good to know," said Eyvel. "Nanna said she hadn't gotten past healing small scrapes and cuts."

"I'm not sure I can do any better, Lady Eyvel, but I can certainly try."

Nanna was fortunate in that she hadn't tried to do something beyond her skill; the arrow wound in her father's back had been a tricky job even for Sabha and her nephew Colte to manage. The children claimed the arrowhead had fallen off the shaft two days before, shortly after their father had been struck by it, and even if it had stayed on the shaft the barbed head was in too deep to be simply pulled out, and in too dangerous a spot to be pushed clean forward. But Colte had the skill and the tools to get the arrowhead out, and then Sabha could deal with the wound itself- and a terrible mess that was, after being left untreated so long.

"He's just been sleeping," Sabha said now. "Makes a little noise now and again, but hasn't stirred otherwise."

Eyvel studied her guest, who was lying prone in a bed that was almost too short for him. He seemed to be about thirty years in age, and aside from the miserable state he'd been in that afternoon, the main thing that stood out about him was the shade of his hair. Blue hair turned up now and again among the people of Thracia, but usually it was a soft dark blue, like the sea near dusk. Finn, wherever he'd come from, had a thick thatch of hair in a lighter, brighter shade, like borage blossoms or the sky on an autumn day. He seemed to resemble Lugh, and when he'd opened his eyes once they'd also been blue, the same hue as Nanna's eyes, and Eyvel had to wonder if the children's missing mother had been dark or fair.

"You don't have to spend the night here, Sabha. I'll be sure to check on him."

Sabha protested; Lady Eyvel had too much on her hands already, looking out for all the village as she did, and Sabha didn't mind one or two sleepless nights if it kept the poor man comfortable.

"With a wound like that it's lucky he's not already running a fever, and if that sets in you may as well have me here and ready with all my herbs. And maybe I can make some use of this lovely thing as well," Sabha said of the staff.

"All right, Sabha. You win." Eyvel personally hoped Sabha lived to be a hundred, as there wasn't any girl in the village likely to match her skill with herbs.

Sabha's nephew was waiting for Eyvel when she got downstairs again.

"Lady Eyvel?"

"Why the dour face, Colte?" She wondered if he'd been pacing around the village all evening.

"I wanted to talk to you about these fugitives you've taken in."

"That's a harsh word, Colte."

"Seems fair to me. I don't know what kind of trouble we're in, but I reckon it's trouble like we've never seen," he replied. "The boy's sword, the man's lance... such rare and expensive weapons for a humble family of travelers."

"Lugh said the sword came from his mother."

"So he did. And then we have this." Colte picked up Nanna's satchel and drew from it a small bundle. Colte's brow darkened as he unwrapped what proved to be a finely-crafted dagger; like Lugh's sword, the blade was resonant with magic. "It's one of these that sucks the life out of a man without even touching his skin. What sort of people have you got here?"

"I have two children in need of shelter."

"And then there's the horse," Colte continued, for he would plod along his own course in his own time until he got to where he intended. "With the imperial stamp all over its tack."

"I didn't see that," Eyvel admitted.

"It'd been removed in some places... but not everywhere. And finally, there's this." Colte picked up the steel head of the arrow that he'd taken from Finn. "The bandits in these parts don't have this grade of weapon."

"They do if they've stolen them."

"This is no crossbow bolt, Lady Eyvel."

Eyvel had to admit that the wickedly barbed piece of metal had come from a longbow. One of the local ruffians might steal such a bow from an imperial soldier, but using it was another matter. No, Colte had a strong argument. A horse taken from the stables of the emperor's army, an arrow fired by a bowman in the emperor's service...

"I share your suspicion that our guests are far from ordinary, Colte. But I won't turn two children out into the cold based on mere suspicion. I don't plan to subject either of them to a round of hard questions, either." Nor did she plan to share the intuition, the feeling, that formed the base of her own budding ideas about the children. "We'll have more information out of their father when he comes around."

"If he comes around."

Colte was the doubting sort, but the day's events had pushed him beyond the point where he could take anything on faith. Eyvel just smiled at him.

"Thank you for giving me a hand with all this, Colte. Have a good night, and give Orsin my best when you see him."

"Don't let my auntie work herself sick," he said over his shoulder. And off he went, back to his house outside the village walls, Fiana's first line of defense.

Eyvel made one final check on all her charges before she retired for the night; Sabha remained upright in her chair with the staff clasped in her hands, Finn was still breathing, and in Mareeta's room Eyvel found three little heads- chestnut, raven, and golden- all sound asleep. It looked oddly right, she thought as she closed the door.

-x-

Daybreak

Eyvel didn't often dream, but just before daybreak she found herself in a deep and vivid dream in which she was a small child, younger than Nanna. She wandered through a empty house that was their own home in Fiana, yet wasn't, and as she found herself in one strange new corridor after another, Eyvel realized the house was filling with cold seawater and was going to sink.

Eyvel shook off the dream. The children needed her attention just then; she brushed out all their tangled hair, and was pleased that Lugh didn't yelp at all when she dealt with his cowlicks.

"Now you look presentable," she said to him. "Nanna, it's your turn."

Nanna's hair was exceptional, each strand so fine that two or three of her hairs would make one of Mareeta's. Combing out that pale-yellow hair caused a strange feeling in Eyvel's breast, a sense that she'd done this before. Not combed a girl's hair- that was an everyday task- but combed out fine, soft hair just like Nanna's. That feeling doubled when Nanna looked up at her with those wide blue eyes and thanked Eyvel for taking care of her so.

She fastened a ribbon in Nanna's hair and sent them out to play. Since Lugh and Nanna could already read, and Sabha was too busy right now to teach them of herbs, there wasn't much in Fiana for them but play in that moment. Mareeta would be their guide, she said, and as long as they were back by sundown with something for everyone's dinner, she'd consider it time well spent. Once the children were out the door, she checked in again on Sabha and her patient.

"Did you sleep at all, Sabha?"

"I did, Lady Eyvel, and don't you worry about me," said Sabha. "He's a little feverish now, as I expected, but I did try a bit with the staff and I think it did some good."

She showed her handiwork to Eyvel, who agreed the the wound seemed less deep than before, and the angry red flesh around it seemed less so.

"We'll be fine," said the crone, her wrinkles arranged in an expression of satisfaction.

Eyvel went on patrol that day; she brought with her young Halvan, the most attentive of the village boys when it came to martial arts, and they had an afternoon unmarked by the appearance of either brigands or Imperial soldiers. Halvan always asked her the right questions (Colte's boy Orsin often asked the wrong ones), and his performance that day was as solid and dutiful as any mercenary leader might have liked. Then it was back to her own house to check on Sabha and await the return of the children.

"Woke long enough to take some broth and a bit of tea, though he's not much for talking," Sabha reported. "He keeps trying to settle on his left side, so I'd like to roll him over and I'm afraid I can't manage that alone."

"I can help you with that, Sabha. There's no need for me to summon Colte."

As tall as he was, Finn was whip-cord thin, with the kind of build that would've been termed "slight" for someone less tall. Eyvel couldn't have lifted him on her own, either, but she and Sabha managed well enough. The movement woke Finn, though; he looked directly at Eyvel now, and the confusion that passed over his face seemed something more than simple delirium.

"Briggid... you've cut off your hair."

"What?"

But the moment of clarity already had slipped. Finn was looking past her now, and shortly thereafter closed his eyes again and slept.

"He's a northerner, mark my words," Eyvel heard Sabha mutter. "I thought I heard it in the children, but this one sounds as far north as you can go before you hit the sea."

On hearing his aunt's assessment of Finn, Colte decided that the appearance of the children and their "father" was an Imperial ruse designed to bring the full weight of the Empire down on Ith and Fiana. Eyvel let him make his case to her at length that evening as they shared some ale. Hearing a man out didn't always mean that you believed him.

-x-

Afternoon

By the third morning, it was as though Lugh and Nanna had always been there in her house. Three little heads bent over their porridge in the morning, three small pairs of shoes lined up at the door, three good-byes shouted to her as the children ran off to play.

"Be in by sundown, and don't forget to catch something for supper!" she called after them.

Eyvel had a busy morning herself, including a survey of the village walls for damage at the northeast corner, said to be the work of wild hogs. Wild hogs meant it was time for a hunt, and Eyvel and Colte began to toss around the details of what the hunt would mean, and whether the people from the Purple Mountains ought to be brought in for assistance. Then the mail-carrier from Ith arrived with a few petitions for assistance from around the area, and Eyvel and Colte worked out which of these should be accepted and whether or not young Halvan was skilled enough to accompany them on a job.

"And what of your son Orsin, then?"

"That wild boy? He'll never amount to a thing," Colte snorted. "No, bring Halvan along... if he gets some responsibility, that might make my n'er-do-well sit up and take notice and want some for himself."

The mail-carrier also brought a pair of silver bracelets, a gift-in-kind from a merchant whose caravan Eyvel had protected a few months before. The bracelets would have been perfect for Mareeta's slender wrists, but rather than present them both to her daughter, Eyvel decided to set them aside for now. If Nanna stayed with them, she could just as easily give the girls one bracelet apiece.

The sun shone red and low before Eyvel reached her own house again. Sabha and the scent of fish broth greeted her at the door.

"Ah, Lady Eyvel. He's fully awake now and asking questions."

Finn was sitting up now, or as much "up" as Sabha would allow him to be. He gave Eyvel a strange look as she entered the room- haunted, she thought.

"You are?"

"Eyvel, mistress of this village. I found you outside my gates three days ago." She had a fair idea of what the main question on Finn's mind might be. "Lugh and Nanna are both fine. You should be proud of them for the way they've been."

"Where are they? Can you show them to me?"

Sabha was right about Finn's northern accent, but what stood out to Eyvel was an odd muted quality to his voice. The look in his eyes said he wanted to behold those children safe and sound right now, but the words came out guarded. Measured.

"They're out playing with my daughter. They should be back within the hour." She smiled at him then to set him at ease. "Finn, you can take me at my word. I understand there's something to this situation that's outside the ordinary, but I've no plans to betray you unless you're working for the Empire."

She had quite deliberately worn her sword into his room- a blade imbued with fire magic, as fine in its own way as the ones owned by the children.

"I do not serve the Empire," he said, and now distaste for the very idea of the Empire did leak into his words. He sounded every bit as fond of the Empire as was Colte, or the men of the Purple Mountains, or Eyvel herself.

"Good." She took a more relaxed pose than her initial stance by the door, to let him know the fire sword would remain in its sheath. "Those children of yours have suffered a great deal, it seems. Was Briggid their mother?"

"Briggid?" His tone didn't waver, but she saw his eyes as they darkened. "No."

"I'm sorry. You said the name once when you weren't quite aware of yourself."

"Did I?" He had an iron control over his inflection, she thought, but Finn couldn't do a thing to hide the way the pupils of his eyes went wide over this line of questioning. His tone was opaque but his eyes made him transparent to her; she could almost hear Finn asking himself, What else did I say?

She waited for the explanation, but it never came.

"Well, then. That may stay a mystery. Please, though, do tell me- as I think I do deserve to know- what have those two children gone through that they ended up here?"

Eyvel didn't know what she expected to hear from him, as she hadn't wasted time by piecing together an entire tapestry of her suspicions.

"I was a knight of Leonster," he began, and then proceeded to tell her a tale as stark as it was fantastic, an account of fallen kingdoms and lost princesses, of assassination and treachery, and of two children who between them carried the bloodline of three holy crusaders.

"I'd thought the children surely must be of some noble house, but I'd no idea that Lugh... I mean, Lord Leif... was the heir to Leonster." Nor would she ever have guessed that Nanna's mother had been a princess from faraway Nordion, though that did explain the golden hair.

"We've endangered your village by setting foot in it," Finn said, and his voice was fading out now. "I'm sorry... I never meant to bring any harm to this place."

"Well, fate brought you here, as it brought me here in my time," she said to him then. "When you can fight again, we'll defend your prince and my village together. That's fair, isn't it?"

More than fair, his eyes said to her, and Finn smiled just a little at her before falling back into sleep. Eyvel left him to another night of Sabha's care; how she wished, at that moment, that she could share the improbable truth with Colte, with anyone! But it sounded as though the price of their safety might be measured in silence, and so Eyvel spent a long while thinking of ways to fend off the questions her own people would ask.

The children rewarded her faith with two rabbits and a basket of wood mushrooms. The idea of a young prince killing rabbits while a little princess plucked mushrooms from tree trunks was so absurd to her that Eyvel had to fight off laughter at a few points through dinner; poor Mareeta kept trying to catch her mother's eye to share in the joke.

-x-

Sundown

Eyvel kept her promise to Mareeta and they made the trip to Ith the following day. Eyvel hired a horse-cart for herself and the three children and they left at sunrise on the journey. They played cards to pass the time, and when the children grew bored with cards, Eyvel told Leif and Nanna about the countryside around them. The "siblings" seemed relieved to no longer be hiding their identities from her.

"Lord Leif, the people in Ith are no friends of the Empire, but we must be cautious as you and Lady Nanna do make an impression at first sight. It might be best if you don't use your real names today."

The two agreed they didn't want any trouble, and so they had a pleasant outing in Ith with the crusader children pretending to be anything but. First they saw the cobbler and Eyvel got Mareeta her new pair of sandals and a pair of tasseled slippers for Nanna to wear in the village. Then they went to the market for both fresh and dried fish and the little rosy shrimp that Mareeta loved in her soup. Eyvel took them to her favorite tavern, one that served a thick stew of sweet and tiny scallops and spring onion, and as a treat she ordered cherrytree ale, weak enough and sweet enough to be suitable for the children. Leif asked for a second cup of it, and here Eyvel decided to set some limits.

"One each," she said. "When you're older and have some gold of your own, we can come back here and then you can have two rounds of it."

Leif grew quiet, then, and after a few moments he said, "Eyvel, are you saying we can come back here with you?"

"Of course. Mareeta and I try to visit here at least once a month, so we should see Ith often."

Leif and Nanna exchanged a look then- Nanna had inherited Finn's ability to give an eloquent glance, and Leif must have picked it up over time. Eyvel let them think about it for a while.

The day passed quickly in Ith; Eyvel visited the pawn shop to see if anything good was within the reach of her wallet, and she managed to collect two more petitions for aid before the their visit ended- one foolish, one worth looking into. Since Leif hadn't asked for anything at the cobbler's and Finn had given her a few coins to buy the prince something to eke out his meager wardrobe, they stopped at the tailor's and had measurements taken for a new coat for the chilly months. Eyvel paid for half the bill that day and announced she'd be back in a month to pick up the coat and pay the remainder. She could feel Leif's eyes on her as she gave the tailor his orders.

They really ought to have left after that, but now that Eyvel had taken care of the things that needed doing, she wanted a few moments to herself. She took the children down by the seashore, not far from the place she'd been found seven years before. The sea at Ith was most beautiful at dawn, when the red sun rose from the deep blue water, but the soft light of late afternoon turned the sea-foam and the white wings of gulls to pale gold and then the beach was almost as lovely. The children ran across the sand, shouting at the gulls and tripping over the dunes, and Eyvel stared out across the endless dark sea.

She'd come from the sea, fully-formed, with nothing but a sense of justice and the means to bring it about with her sword, as though she'd been placed upon the earth solely to be an instrument of justice. The men who called her the "goddess" of Fiana thought so. But surely she had been born, been raised, learned somewhere, from someone, of right and wrong and what to do about each.

Someone must have first placed a blade in her hands and taught her how to use it.

And then there were the flashes, the little moments- the sense of panic in her dream as water rose in the house that wasn't a house. The sense of recognition in the eyes of an proud and angry little boy. The sense of something familiar in combing out a child's golden hair.

These children are meant to be my children, she thought as she watched the trail of footsteps they left on the sand. We are the same. There by the sea, she felt she almost knew what that meant, but the words didn't come to her lips even if she felt them somewhere in her heart.

She collected her children and took them home in the dying light, before the sea could wash the image of their small footprints away.

The End

A/N: Title derived from the sort-of title track of "We Are the Same" by The Tragically Hip. Eyvel's dream is based on a memory-fragment from being lost on the sinking boat as a child. The memory of brushing a child's fine golden hair comes from another memory fragment of taking care of a very young Patty. Scenario in general based on Eyvel's conversation with Leif from Chapter 24X, fleshed out by the FE5 OA and one of the manga adaptations. Leif's pseudonym is straight out of FE5 game canon.