The Losing End

(Prologue: Little Miracles)

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters

This perhaps requires a word of explanation. During my first playthrough of FE4, I was initially charmed by Azel. So cute. So effective. I couldn't wait to promote him. Then, he started to falter in battles. He fell behind and became a frustration, even a liability. So, out of that, sprang a little fanfic continuity I mentally dubbed "Loser!Azel," and these four chapters are based in that gameplay/'fic continuity. The flippant title of this 'fic continuity doesn't mean that these are funny stories- I'm quite serious about some of the themes dealt with here. But I'm not serious about ALL of it in the "this is my SRS BZNS headcanon" sense.

WARNING: Contains and references a variety of FE4 first-gen pairings, both het and NOT het, centering around the trio of Tiltyu/Azel/Lex. But not really Tiltyu/Azel in a romantic sense. Got it?

On a ship bound for Silesia

They said that if he just kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, he'd stop being sick. Try as he might, Azel's attention kept slipping to the gray-green waves, the glittering white caps and satiny troughs, and bile rose up from his stomach to sting in his throat. So it was his own fault, his own weakness, that he was still seasick, and knowing that made him feel worse. Azel rested his head on the rail and wished he could just fall into black unconsciousness and not wake until they reached Silesia.

"Aw, poor thing. Can I join ya?"

"Tiltyu?" Azel opened one eye. He could already feel a creeping warmth in his cheeks at the idea of Tiltyu seeing him like this. "I guess."

"Thanks!" She settled in next to him, elbows propped against the rail. "Yeah, that's better. I made a real mess in the cabin after breakfast this morning. Finn was a sweetie an' cleaned it all up, but I figured I'd better try an' get some fresh air because I don't want t' do that again."

Fresh salt air and the horizon trick must not have worked for her either, because pretty soon she was retching over the rail. Azel wanted dearly to help her, but he could barely stand, and Tiltyu had to tidy herself up when she was done.

"Yuck," she said as she twisted around the pretty silver ring Finn had bought her- not just any ring, but a magic ring worth more than Azel's current savings and Lex's put together. But Finn had made a small fortune playing the arenas in Agustria, and had that kind of money to spend on a wife.

"I'm sorry you've gotten seasick, too. It's the worst thing ever."

"Well, I don't know about seasick," she said. "I kind of think it's just the baby."

"Baby?"

"Yeah," she said, and tapped her belly. "Aideen said I'm expectin' a little miracle."

"Wow," said Azel, not knowing what he meant, exactly. Probably something along the lines of Wow, that's crazy. He forced his eyes to focus on her midsection, but he couldn't see anything different about it. Then he looked up into Tiltyu's face, at the brilliant smile that flickered for a moment before she put her hands up to her mouth again.

"Ooh. This is no fun."

"I'm sorry," said Azel, though that was the best he could offer her.

"Ya do look awful," she said, and began to rummage around in her coat for a clean handkerchief. "Want this?"

"Thanks."

The little scrap of worn linen had the arms of Freege embroidered in its corner. Azel kept it ready in his hand, but even though his head was spinning, his stomach had quieted down, and he prayed that it would stay quiet.

"I need something t' take the taste of that outta my mouth," Tiltyu was saying. "Wanna come?"

"No, I think I'm better off sleeping for a while."

"See ya," she said, as bright and happy-sounding as he'd ever heard her be.

"Take care," he said, though she might not have even heard him.

Azel sighed and began to haul his nausea-racked body back to his cabin. Actually getting onto his cot seemed like so much effort that Azel nearly dropped down onto the floorboards to sleep. The boards had something sticky on them, though, and so he managed to crawl up on the cot, where he fell into a restless sleep broken by odd, alarming dreams.

He came around to the thump-thump-thump of Lex moving around the cabin.

"Still heaving?"

"I feel like the most useless person ever," Azel replied.

"Naw, that'd be me. Always is," Lex said as he settled down onto his cot. The cot responded with a creak of protest.

Azel once had cherished a little dream that he would marry Lady Aideen of Jungby, and Lex would marry Tiltyu of Freege, and they'd all keep on being friends forever, friends even closer than the famously close Sir Sigurd, King Eltoshan, and Prince Cuan. It seemed like such a nice thing to look forward to. And when none of it happened the way Azel imagined it, he found it easy to blame the war and all the other events outside of their control- certainly, he didn't blame the people. He couldn't blame Midayle for capturing Aideen's heart with his unswerving devotion. He couldn't blame Finn for marrying Tiltyu because... well, Azel didn't really know what they saw in one another. Maybe that was the problem.

Just because Azel didn't blame anyone didn't mean that he felt entirely good about it.

Besides, Finn had been making Azel feel useless almost from the moment they met in Sir Sigurd's camp. Part of it was that Azel had seen the way that Prince Cuan treated Finn and had assumed that Finn was to Cuan what Azel was to Lord Alvis- that is, the younger half-brother that nobody wanted but that existed anyway and had to be handled... somehow. Except that Prince Cuan was a dream of an elder brother, gracious and kind and always looking out for Finn in ways that went beyond anyone's expectations. Cuan worked to build Finn's confidence up, whereas Alvis always managed to knock Azel's confidence down, sometimes in ways Azel even didn't understand. Azel watched this for months and felt rotten, and felt even more rotten when he and Lex learned they'd been wrong about their assumptions and that Finn wasn't Cuan's half-brother at all. Cuan was such a great guy that he was just that kind and considerate toward an apprentice knight who was nobody special. And Azel and Lex watched this, and thought of their own fathers and brothers and of what it felt to be the no-good tail end of a great family and both of them felt thoroughly rotten.

(Azel did sour a little on Prince Cuan's generosity after he noticed Cuan trying to steer Finn into a match with Lady Aideen. It was one thing to compete with people like Jamka the Bandit Prince and Dew the pickpocket for Aideen's attention, and another thing entirely to have Cuan try to rig things in favor of his apprentice. It almost came as a relief when Aideen announced her engagement to Midayle and ended the entire farce.)

The other thing that got under Azel's skin was something he also held against Lex in a way. Finn had a horse, and he was able to charge into a battle and make a name for himself when Azel was forced to creep along in the brush in hopes of catching and finishing off wounded stragglers. Then there was Finn's amazing streak of success in the arena, which got Finn piles of spending money and convinced Holyn the gladiator that Sir Sigurd's cause was worth joining, because Sir Sigurd had such impressive and spirited young talent in his party. Azel got laughed out of the arena on his fourth try back in Verdane, and things didn't get much better after that.

But Azel got used to being slow, and being poor, and to not being seen as a hero. He got used to having the ladies of Sir Sigurd's army consider him and then go for somebody else. And then Tiltyu showed up. And in spite of the years of friendship between her and Lex and Azel, she latched onto Finn like ivy on a wall and began having him "escort" her everywhere. Azel would see them walking around, with Tiltyu's silver plume of hair bobbing at Finn's shoulder and a big grin on Tiltyu's face while Finn just looked vaguely uncomfortable, like he'd rather jump in a river and wash Tiltyu right off of him. Azel and Lex agreed that Tiltyu would shortly get bored with hanging out with someone who was quiet to the point of being weird and mentioned Lord Cuan entirely too much when he did talk.

Then she married him. And now this.

Azel filled Lex in on the day's revelation, and Lex's eyebrows showed some remarkable curvature as he took in the news.

"Man, the idea of Tiltyu with a kid just seems weird to me. I mean, Lady Aideen kind of always seemed like she'd be somebody's mum someday, but not Tiltyu."

"Yeah. It's just... weird." Azel tried to sit, but the motion made his head and stomach churn in opposite directions.

"Dammit, Azel. Don't puke all over the place again. I've been cleanin' up after you for two whole weeks already."

There was a joke to be made from that, somehow, but the words didn't quite connect in Azel's brain. He pressed Tiltyu's handkerchief to his face, and a whisper of perfume embedded in the frayed cloth pushed his body's demands beyond any measure of self-control that he had.

"Dammit," he heard Lex say again. "Look, I need to get something to clean this up. Don't die or anything while I'm gone."

"I'm sorry," Azel groaned. He lay with his head hanging off the side of the cot, pondering again the depths of his own uselessness. But when Lex returned and came to his side, it wasn't just to clean up the mess. Lex had a little cup of something that smelled like honey and ginger.

"Briggid's been hiding this in her room. She says it's an old pirate remedy for the heaves. I had to pay her in gold for it 'cause she's almost out and she lost the recipe when her crew took up against her... but I think you need it."

"Thanks, Lex. I'll pay you back for it." The thick syrupy liquid didn't taste nearly as good as it smelled, and it seemed to solidify in his throat as he swallowed it, but Azel managed to choke it down.

"You can pay me back by not doing that again," said Lex.

In spite of his words, the touch of this large fingers on the back of Azel's neck was profoundly gentle. Azel closed his eyes and tried to focus on the sensation of Lex's fingertips on his skin. It worked a lot better to balance him than trying to stare at an imaginary point on the horizon, Azel decided. He let his head rest on Lex's shoulder as the ship cut through the northern sea on their journey into the unknown.

To Be Continued...