A/N: Done for the fe_fest community challenge at LJ. Prompt: Fire Emblem 11 - Michalis/Minerva - "Did you miss me? / Come and kiss me. / Never mind my bruises, / Hug me, kiss me / ... drink me, love me" My first attempt at writing these two, with very little previous knowledge, though with assistance from Mark of the Asphodel. Enjoy, and please leave a review ^^
Words: 1525
Characters: Minerva, Michalis
Time: Post-Shadow Dragon
Genre: Romance/Angst
Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to Nintendo, not me.
It was strange, she thought, how warm he was. He was dead, after all.
Not in body, mind, or spirit. But he was most assuredly dead to her.
She had killed him, after all. A stab wound to his chest ripped her own heart out, too, though she bore no visible scar.
And yet, if that were so, why was she seeing him, holding him, outside of the world of her dreams? How was it that he smelled like musk and sweat and a little bit of blood, so achingly familiar, a scent that she had always known yet one that had drifted so easily through her conscious memory? But her instinct remembered, her instinct knew; the man to whom she clung, fleeing on a dragon's back, was not a wraith of her imagination.
Neither of them spoke. For some time, Minerva wondered if either of them even breathed. She watched the countryside below become thinner and sparser, paler and greyer, the fading life below mimicking the slow disappearance of all of her logic, her reason, as she came to realize that Michalis was alive.
Night fell. She could see nothing but the stars, for there was no moon tonight; the sky's pitiful illumination reflected ever so faintly off the red of Michalis's hair. In the dark, the color was as impenetrable as blood. The blood that she had once drawn, once felt soaking through her clothes and into her skin, as warm as the body heat that now enveloped her.
A sudden jolt told her they had alighted on solid ground. Her other senses had not informed her of their descent, and so her mild surprise manifested in a tiny exhalation of air, a sigh, a gasp. Michalis's arms were suddenly gone from around her, and so was his warmth. He was below her, one hand raised to assist her in stepping to the ground.
She could not accept it. Nor could she leap down to the ground herself. No, she could not move at all; her muscles failed her, all her energy focusing on racking her memory for some shred of evidence that could prove, beyond all doubt, that his mere existence was genuine. She could find none. She had felt his bones cracking under her spear, heard the ripping of his flesh, seen him collapse, motionless, falling to the floor before his bloody throne.
The same chest that she had stabbed heaved, rising up and down slowly in a prolonged sigh. Michalis's arms extended, encircled her waist, and tensed around her body, pulling her forcefully to the ground. She stumbled a little bit when he released her, surprised that her legs hadn't simply given way completely. A lifetime of training and vigilance, much of it at Michalis's insistence, saved her from the shame of collapsing. For a long time, they stood there in a silent stalemate.
Michalis took a step towards her. Instantly, instinctively, she backed away, and, noticing her reluctance, Michalis followed suit. But he seemed unable to bear the stillness, so he paced before her, while Minerva followed him with her eyes.
"I came to rescue you," he said. "I have saved you."
"And I believe you expect me to be grateful." Her voice was cracked and much higher than she remembered. She swallowed.
"It would be the common response, yes."
Now it was Minerva who walked forward. At the first step, her leg trembled. The second and third were calmer, the fourth steadier still, until she was at last in full control of her body once more. "Is it common to see a man returned from the dead? A man slain by my own hand, who has haunted me in my nightmares, appearing before me once more in the flesh? You are alive, when in all heart and soul I believed you dead. I banished you from the company of the living for your crimes against them. Common! How can I know now, if I was so mistaken before, whether you are alive or dead?"
In the vastness of the desert, her voice rang out loud and clear, but when she was done speaking, the silence became overwhelming once more. If there had been birds, they would have fled their perches with irritable screeches; if there had been a valley, it would have echoed her exclamations with bitter accuracy. But there was nothing.
Michalis stepped forward. His hands moved, and Minerva thought he was going to reach out to her, but instead he pulled at the straps of his armor and his mail, sending them clattering to the ground, and then he shrugged out of his linen undershirt, too. He stood there before her, boldly vulnerable, and she could do nothing but stare.
On the lower left side of his chest, below his heart but above his stomach, he was mangled. In the awkward starlight, the thick white scar appeared to gleam, drawing her gaze like some holy magic. It twisted and disfigured his skin, dark and not fully healed in a few places, as if he had torn the wound back open in his exertions. With each of his breaths, the scar stretched and strained. As she stared, terrified, Minerva could feel his eyes on her.
"Could you have dreamed this, even in your darkest nightmares?" he murmured. "Could anything but reality show you the living wound which you inflicted? This scar would not be in your memories of me, nor in your fantasies…"
She could feel the tears tingling behind her eyes. He took another step closer, and his expression was not what she would have expected it to be. He appeared concerned, or worried, and it must be for her… but if he cared so much, he would not have disappeared as he did, fought her so valiantly as he did… And yet he was there, so close in front of her, looking down at her with all the love and the affection she had grown accustomed to seeing daily in her youth, in her adolescence.
"Did you miss me?" she breathed. One tear escaped and trickled down her cheek, settling on the corner of her lips. "Is that why you came to save me?"
His thumb swiftly wiped the tear away, lingering over her parted lips. "I missed you very much. But I could not… I did not want to draw you into my folly. The Queen of Macedon…"
With a muffled cry, Minerva could compose herself no longer. She allowed her head to fall onto his chest, trying to bite back her tears but failing, feeling his arms wrap around her, his hands tangling in her hair as he hugged her tightly to him. She wanted to scream and storm at him, to ask why did you do it? though she knew there was no answer, to leave him as defenseless and destroyed as she had been when the mantle of her kingdom had been thrust unwillingly onto her shoulders, which were much too fragile bear it, whereas he, he had stolen that burden from their father with pleasure, with ease… And yet it was habit to trust him, to believe in him, to love him.
"Minerva, Minerva…." He whispered her name, lifted her head. "Minerva… Come and kiss me."
He was intoxicating her with his proximity, no, his sheer existence. There was no question in her mind, no confusion; she had to know every part of him, with every sense, before she could be convinced that he was real. And she had to be convinced, for he was too important, too iconic a figure in her life, in her heart, to remain hovering in a haze of ambiguity. Standing on her toes, she stretched herself, touching her lips to his, feeling him, then tasting him. Her lips were sore from where she had bit them to stop her tears, which were now drying in lines along her cheeks. Michalis kissed her gently, at first, as if he were second-guessing his request, as if he were scared of hurting her. But it was her insistence that led them now, and he complied lovingly, desperately.
Her hands began to relax, her fingers unclenching from their fists. She felt the contours of his cheekbones, his jaw, his neck and shoulders. She continued across his chest, shivering briefly over his racing heartbeat. Her hand paused again when she reached the cold smoothness of the scar, trembling with remembrance. She faltered in her kiss, drew back, became hesitant.
"Never mind that," Michalis said. He drew her face back to his. "Hug me, kiss me, hold me. I am nothing without you. Believe me."
He drank in the sight of her with anxious, darkened eyes, and she returned the gaze in kind, still telling herself, I am unconvinced, I am unconvinced.
"Love me," she said at last. "Love me, and I will believe it is you once more."
He kissed her on the forehead, on the cheek, the nose, the lips. He continued to kiss the soft, sensitive spots that only he knew below her ear, at the dip of her neck, and above her collarbone. A shiver that had little to do with the frigid desert night raced across Minerva's skin.
"You will not believe, Minerva… you will know."