When Jakob first joined the Northern Fortress, his lack of coordination was beyond impressive. He'd lose himself in thought and burn meals black. He'd wobble along with a tray, always dropping the thing in the end, shattering fine china and spilling tea. He'd paw at his needle with shaking, fearful hands, stabbing his fingers and tearing the fabric. Flora often hovered in the halls to listen to the other servants' idle gossip, so she already knew full well about the snivelling boy, about her age, who'd been left carelessly on the steps of the fortress.
Every action of his, she noted, was heavy with distress.
Flora herself would complete her tasks with aching precision, measuring out portions to a t, tipping the tray so it stayed perfectly level, threading the needle with practiced accuracy. All of her actions were cold, unfeeling, perfectly scripted. She was the actress who begrudgingly played her part, stuck between three walls on a stage with nowhere to look but her audience. Of the willing servants. Of her unaccepted liege. Of Garon, with his conniving eyes that bore two holes into her from so far away.
Jakob could not handle his role, so it seemed. Flora carried a basket of washing one night, deliberately slowing her footsteps to a gentle plod as she made it into the residential corridors. A pair of older maids spoke carelessly about his fate, how it seemed he was to be thrown out for his lack of usefulness. Flora stopped in her tracks, her poise momentarily forgotten. Instead, her mind conjured up the image of a young boy, with no family worth referring to as such, alone on the dark streets of Nohr. Her heart twisted in fear, almost as strong as if she was the one to be cast out into. Her stage, her prison, be damned. She had no choice but to act.
The following day, Flora completed her chores in record time, somehow making no mistakes even while her mind was on the real task ahead. Normally, she'd allow herself a sigh of relief for the careful control she'd managed to maintain despite everything. Instead, she rushed through the servants' quarters. Searching.
She found him sitting alone and on the floor clutching at a needle uselessly, perhaps resigned to his fate. He hunched over a fabric that he had draped over his lap, navy blue with a sharp gash through the middle, with a thin thread of the same shade splayed over it uselessly. The scene was not unfamiliar to her; she had seen him many times before, readying his needle and failing even to thread it. He jumped immediately when she stepped into the room, her heel dropping onto the stone floor with a clean click. It was at that moment, as their eyes met, that she realised the two of them had never exchanged words before, ever, and she hadn't even considered she was going to say to him.
"What do you want?" he hissed, pressing down hard on the first word. Accusative. Afraid, Flora decided. Not of her, perhaps, but the future.
She sharpened herself, speaking with all the steel a girl of her age could muster. "I'm going to help you." And with that, she settled herself down beside him, and inspected his work before he could put in another word. "Your thread," she gestured to the offending item with one hand. "Its end is frayed. It's no wonder that you can't push it through your needle." Sure enough, the thread had split and splayed out in all directions, perhaps pushed apart from how aggressively it had been cut from the rest of the roll.
For a moment, Jakob remained silent, his eyes wide and uncertain and vulnerable. Aggression was a fragile mask, it seemed. Flora held the end of the thread between two fingers and gently dropped it into his hand. "Try pressing it between your lips. It'll bring the ends back together." Jakob obliged silently. It seemed to take all of the effort in the world to move his jaw- untense, release, shut, and squeeze and release again. There was something undeniably fragile about the act. But when he produced the thread once more, its loose strands were pressed together, firm and sharp and prepared. Jakob passed it through the eye of the needle on his first try, and his face opened up in surprise.
"That's perfect," murmured Flora, and when he turned to look at her, the youths wore the same quiet hopefulness. "Now, let's try and get the actual stitching correct…"
Each day, another task would go awry in Jakob's hands, and Flora would step in, as if by fate, to correct it just before the mistake set itself in stone. In time, whispers in the halls of his dismissal fell away in favour of more mundane gossip. Every time Flora bobbed in to stir the pots or catch the trays or undo the wonky stitches, she felt herself edge closer and closer to something dangerous. Felicia was unknowingly bound here too, and incompetence was in her nature. There was no risk in calling out directions to her, in squeezing her shoulder when she felt sad. Her audience expected it. It was something they allowed. But it wasn't part of Flora's role to protect a stranger, to swell with pride when he mirrored her actions. To feel warm and right and real with him.
It all came to a head one night, when the two sat in the same spot as the very first time they'd spoken. They inspected another hole in another blue cape, this time draped over both of their laps. (And what a luxury it must be, thought Flora bitterly, to rip the same place over and over with no fear of dismissal or blackmail or unspeakable punishment.) Flora scrutinised Jakob's stitching, neater than before, yes, but still wide and clumsy with inexperience.
"You'll have to try again, I think," she offered, harsh but sympathetic, and Jakob cringed slightly but nodded. She pulled the fabric taut so the offending section was tense and ready to unpick, when a voice, eternally hoarse and tight-lipped, cleared its throat with exaggerated volume.
When Flora jolted and lifted her head, the sight of the veteran knight Gunter made her eyes widen and her mouth shut tight with fear. She sensed Jakob, incriminatingly by her side, tense up as well. She couldn't quite make out Gunter's face, but his eyes were clear, bright white in the dark. Trained directly on them. He towered higher than the fortress, the light from the corridor casting a shadow as pitch black as his armour over the two of them.
For the last few years, Flora had considered herself an actress, adept at feigning nonchalance and keeping her head down. Now, she was too afraid to do either.
Gunter was the one to break the brief silence, snapping it in two with the strength he'd once defeated enemies with. "Flora, correct? Your presence is needed in the kitchens." He narrowed his eyes slightly, perhaps more out of tiredness than aggression. "Tend to your sister."
With that, the panic ebbed away. It trickled out of Flora's limbs, little by little, giving her the means to move and stand again limply.
"By the way," cut in Gunter, allowing his stiff back to slouch slightly. "If you're going to teach that runt a thing or two… ensure he can make tea that doesn't taste like the urine of an aging wyvern."
The relief seemed to have settled into Jakob far too soon, because his clever tongue was whipped out in a moment's notice. "Let's see you do better, old man."
Flora barely had time to worry again before Gunter snorted indignantly. "Alright, you brat. I'll see to that another day." He glanced at Flora and nodded his head back to the corridor before he spun on his heel and left, leaving her staring at the open door in silence.
"You should go," said Jakob matter-of-factly. "We aren't quite safe yet."
"We never are. That's how this place works." She still had her back to him, but she could imagine his face, unaware of the scale of her stage, the precision of her script. The consequences of a botched line. "I'll see you soon, I suppose."
"There's no suppose about it." The sheer brashness made her smile slightly. There was very little sign of the boy from a few weeks ago, now. He no longer moved like every action ached, or spoke like every word required energy he did not have.
As Flora made her way down the corridor to her sister's latest mishap, she decided that yes, there would be a day that one of the three walls on her stage would collapse in on itself, and she'd have to be the one to make it happen. But even when all eyes were on her, she was safe to deviate ever so slightly. She would allow herself the quiet pleasure that came from a young boy's smile and snark and stares of wonder.
If it was something she deemed necessary, she was safe to feel.
Some observations:
- Flora is indeed into Jakob.
- She isn't terribly fond of Corrin.
- She admits in-game that she had little chance to feel or do anything at all when she was so restricted.
I threaded together a few of those concepts and this came out of it.
I'm trying to write more short, concise pieces (I know you don't really get that vibe from this 1.5k word fic, but that's the truth, I swear!) so I'm opening up little fic requests at my tumblr blog, also misshallery. I'm familiar with pretty much anything FE related. We'll see how that goes.