Title: Touched
Fandom: FE9, but precanon
Character/Pairing: IkeSoren, though young enough that it's likely more gennish/loyalty/friendship than anything.
Sense: Touch
Summary: It only took one touch to change the course of a life. IkeSoren
"It takes so little to make people happy. Just a touch, If we know how to give it, just a word fitly spoken, a slight readjustment of some bolt or pin or bearing in the delicate machinery of a soul."
-Frank Crane
A/N: POR spoilers and RD spoilers, yes, for that. I swore I wouldn't write anymore of that scene for at least a while but this demanded it.
Loudly.
And before r-amythest pulls a BZZT CANON POLICE tazer on me, this is AUish in timeline.
Thanks to Runespoor7 for catching some errors that fell into print the first time~
I.
His eyes fluttered, the light that fell through the trees was too bright. It stung. He felt the warmth of another hand over his own and turned to face. It hurt to move. It hurt to think. Soren wanted to sleep some more, sleep and sleep and sleep until the cold and the hunger would disappear.
But that light kept falling through the tree leaves and getting into his eyes.
Soren focused and unfocused, his mind willing to slip back into the blissful release again. And that's when he saw a tinge of blue hovering beside him.
"Hey, you! Are you ok?" The boy said.
Soren's mouth opened and his lips moved but he was wordless. He let out a gasp, the closest he could do to responding.
The boy moved closer and hovered above him. There were small hands on his arms, pulling him up. Soren felt fear inside his veins, but was too weak to even shy from the boy's touch. When the boy brought out a lunch, Soren was too transfixed with the food to every be freed form this snare.
The boy held it out to him, and Soren tried to lift his arms to grab it, but he was only strong enough to lift them slightly, only to have them tumble back to his sides.
"You don't look so good," The boy said. Soren watched him as he rifled through his pockets and finally pulled out a bundle of something.
"Mother did this when I was sick."
He didn't realize what the boy was doing until he felt something press against his lips and was the feeling of food on his tongue, in his mouth. Taste. He instinctively chewed and felt an ember heat flicker inside his body. It was the most delicious thing he had tasted, the only thing he'd had but berries in weeks.
"I should go tell father about you, I bet he'd let you stay," Ike said. "I'd rather share a bed with you than Mist. She's too little and still wets the bed. You don't wet the bed, do you?"
Home. Memories flashed by. A woman bemoaning his very existence, harsh words aimed at him every waking moment. A sage whose only goal was to pass on his knowledge, no matter what amount of effort it took.
To him the hearth of home was a cold thing, a prison boughten with food and heat. Surely this place would be the same, the same loud voices and anger.
Soren shook his head. No, he couldn't go to this warm place the boy promised. There would be a catch. There would be unhappiness again.
"No? Are you sure? Well, my mother is calling me. I promise I'll come back.," he said.
And then Soren watched as the boy ran away. The warmth that had grown inside him did not disappear, but in the solitude he felt the hope waver. He didn't dare to believe, and yet a tiny part of him did.
.
The boy came back the next day It had been such a relief to see the boy return, like letting go of a breath held for too long. His lungs no longer burned anymore.
It was summer now, the days were long and the nights were never too cold, Soren had begun to scavenge for food in the town nearby. People threw away perfectly good food in refuse. If he could close his eyes and pinch his nose, Soren could almost withstand the stench. He'd had to fight the wild dogs for it, with sticks and fierce faces. Soren longed for a wind tome to truly push them aside, but he'd lost the last one he had while crossing a river.
At the moment the weather was fine, but the sage had taught him the seasons. He had drilled In him the meaning of cold weather, and he remembered the woman's doorstep he was often thrown to, and how the cold wind howled through the cracks of the doors and the holes of his filthy blanket. The kind of blanket you wouldn't give to a dog.
It was midday when the boy came. He never seemed to come at a specified time, sometimes he would greet Soren with the morning light. Others, he wouldn't come until late in the day when Soren had settled into his despair as the light was receding into itself.
This time, he brought a small blanket as well as a his bundled lunch. ("You can't have a blanket fort without a blanket! Those two trees would be great for a blanket fort!")
"You're stronger now, I bet," the boy grinned. "We're the same age...wanna play?"
Soren blinked. He misunderstood the question. He'd heard the word many times, though never quite understood its meaning.
"Tag, you're it!"
He pushed into Soren, with only the careless roughness of a young boy. However, Soren was weak and light enough that he simply fell over.
He looked up, wary and scared, and wondered why the boy who'd saved him just hurt him.
"Eh, are you ok? You're supposed to chase me!"
Soren shrank back as the boy came closer, in case he would shove him as roughly again.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to push you down. That's just how you play. You touch the other person and they're 'it'."
Soren tilted his head in curiosity. He wondered if he really could trust this boy after all.
"I never told you my name, did I? I'm Ike. What's your name?"
Soren tried to open his mouth but no words came out. Ike didn't seem to mind, though.
"You'll tell me eventually. I'll be waiting until then. See you tomorrow!"
And Soren sunk back deep into his grassy knoll as the trees whispered overhead.|His sleep was peaceful and dreamless for the first time in his small life.
.
Ike came the day after that and after that. For seven days he returned and brought food, until he took bundles so big that he wobbled from carrying them.
Soren kept what he could of the food for later. He gorged on what couldn't keep in this weather until his stomach filled and stopped its gnawing and burning and he sat back, his hunger stilled for the first time since he'd left the sage's. With this the grass felt softer and the wind felt gentler. This wood almost seemed hospitable, save for the beasts and other people who visited.
It seemed like a home.
Even Soren at his young age knew that summer couldn't last forever. His fear had lessened, but still a twinge of it remained. He wanted to follow Ike home, blanketfort dragging behind him as he made his way to where his friend resided. He would sleep on the floor and suffer insults if he had too.
It would be ok, if Ike was there.
The thing that stopped him most was Soren didn't know if Ike's father would accept him.
Soren had even caught a glimpse of Ike and his father in town. Ike didn't resemble his father much, Greil was too large and his face too full of rough angles. Soren could see a certain likeness forming, but it was slight.
For a moment he'd wondered if Ike had been snuck into Greil's nest like a cuckoo child.
He looked at Greil's face as deeply as he could, as if to invoke some unknown power that the sage had missed. Was he a kind man? Or would he strike Soren just as the woman had?
Even though he wished to stray into their door, memories kept him on the doorstep.
.
Ike kept coming back until one day he didn't. Soren waited until dark lay in wait, with gold skies turning red and an unnatural coolness descending over the forest. When he braved past his forest. The trees waved their goodbyes as he left.
The first thing that reached him upon returning there was the smell of death. It was raw, thick and new in the air. And before him lay the violence of a massacre.
Soren had grow accustomed to finding bodies. He had witnessed the sage's death, and come upon bodies by the gutters where he slept; in the shanties of the furthest parts of towns, where the penniless ones resided.
He felt calm as he inspected them, even as the carnage they had been through looked like the work of some demon, Soren felt no fear. Even soldiers with black armies had come. Within them he took whatever supplies were salvageable from the dead. Let them haunt him, Soren had seen enough cruelty in the world to not fear mere ghosts.
Within them he found food. Dried meat and hardtack, waterskins made of a kind of animal skin he wasn't familiar with. And in one, maps and a sketch of a man. He was a grizzled man, all rough edges and strength.
While the resemblance was not complete, the drawing was of a the man Soren recognized as the Ike's father. He had heard him called 'Greil', and assumed it a name, not a title.
The text, however, said Former General Gawain
A fugitive from a country far away.
Soren stepped around the bodies as he left the town. There were women and children here brutally slain, and yet he saw no blue-haired child amongst them. If he had, that last bit of hope would've dried up deep inside.
There was only one clue to the boy's disappearance: a man once named Gawain, now called Greil. Soren could only retrace the man's footsteps to find where he would go.
So Soren started. He lived in churches and played the part of a prodigy aided by spirits. Soren never cared to correct someone's mistake if it was favorable. Through Crimea, Begnion, he traveled with merchants and pilgrims alike.
And with each step, past these hidden footprints, he drew ever nearer.
II.
The diversion in Daein had been a fleeting one. The trail had long grown cold and the likenesses of Gawain and Greil seemed more loose theory than anything nearing truth.
His shoulders were stiff from being hunched over in books. He rested his forehead against his palm. It was throbbing from reading so many words. Daein did not keep its libraries in an orderly fashion. They were dusty, half-used things that were often treated with less care than refuse. On more than one occasion Soren found books that had molded through due leaks, as well as vermin-eaten specimens.
It was a shame, some of the better, more informative ones had already been ruined.
Soren left the libraries of Nevassa discouraged. The cold, grey clouds had huddle in, like a plague, and he had to huddle close to miss the chill of the slicing wind.
Halfway to the residence, sleet began to fall.
It was poor weather to go wait in the breadlines, and Daein was not known for its hospitality. The food for the poor was worse than what they fed their swine. However, Soren mentally noted that too much hunger would weaken him. He had felt the effects of starving firsthand.
Huddled down, Soren did not see the dark cloaks or the shadows beside him. Even in a land choked by madness, the unseen queen was not without her allies.
They passed him by, for what was there to find in a young ragged scholar, sickly and pale. There was certainly nothing noble about him.
Perhaps, if fate had intervened and chosen that path, if Soren had lifted his head to examine the people around him, his life would have been far different.
In another life, he could have been a prince.
Soren did not stay long after that. The climate of Daein was volatile, the people were uneducated and repugnant and the ground never seemed to truly thaw this far north. Winter's cold hung on, even in the warmest months, like an unwelcome guest.
And worst of all the trail had gone cold. The hypothesis of the similarities of Gawain and Greil and that this Gawain could be that boy's father was a far-fetched one, the kind of theory of a child.
And yet, Soren was still a child.
III.
Soren was nearing twelve when he finally caught up. It seemed such an odd occurrence, years of diligent search and calculations and he met Ike again by pure chance. He'd been haggling with a butcher for a bit of sparse, overpriced meat when he felt the presence of someone behind him. Soren was not prone to paying the least bit attention to anyone near him, but this time he turned.
The butcher rattled on marginally better prices but his voice was unimportant, a faraway irritating noise, such as a buzzing fly from what had gained his full attention. The boy had grown up a lot since then, he was much taller and showed the beginnings of adulthood sown in his lanky frame.
But it was the same blue eyes, the same face.
"...Ike?"
Ike blinked. His face showed know signs of recognition.
"How do you know my name?"
Soren felt something crumble. Some well of hope, of expectation, he'd been a foolish child to assume that Ike would remember him and that somehow he could reclaim that. The last few years of his life had been to reclaim a memory.
"...it's nothing, excuse me."
"Wait— Don't go!"
Ike grabbed Soren's arm and it was the same startling warmth on contact. It was all it took to halve the overwhelming emotions and bring Soren's equilibrium back. In a moment of emotion, he'd almost thrown away years of searching.
Ike looked curiously at him, not afraid, but neither did he comprehend the lines in his face or remember seven days six years ago that had been the first taste of happiness in Soren's life.
"What's your name?" Ike said. And it was the same stare, the same face and skin and person. Only this time, Soren wasn't silent.
"Soren," he replied softly, memory tinging his every step.
"You should come home with us, that butcher always overprices, even to widows. Father says he's a crook," Ike said.
"I've no choice. He said he'd give me a discount for settling his papers and affairs but then he reneged."
"Really? Because father was looking for a bookkeeper," Ike said, offhand.
"I can handle secretarial work," Soren replied.
"Then you should go see him, here, I'll lead the way."
Ike grabbed his hand again and soon merged back into a group of mercenaries. There was a bright girl in a brighter colored dress, a priest with tan hair and a gentle face, a squinty eyed green-haired knight and two green haired children that Soren surmised must be somehow related to him. None of them offered any complaint that Soren might darker their door, Oscar even passed a small bit of bread and meat to pass around, and made extra care to include a portion for Soren himself.
The path to the residence of the Greil's Mercenaries was farther than Soren had expected. He took this path in silence, while Ike's sister, Mist, filled the silence with her sunny chatter.
On that trip back, Soren made one decision. His life had already been chosen away. Even if Ike no longer remembered him or the happiness, Soren would protect that feeling, that person no matter what the consequences.
He felt comforted simply to be here beside Ike again, and if he had to keep his life as a shadow at Ike's right side, then so be it. All the despair had bled into a logic and a smooth, water like calm.
.
Upon meeting Greil, his suspicions only solidified more. There was a twang of a Daein accent, even if Greil tried to conceal it. It had lightened over the years that only a practiced ear could hear such a thing, but Soren noted it well.
When Greil saw him he gave no indication of remembrance, as had his son.
Soren consoled himself the only way he knew how: with logic. Ike had been very young at the time, it was not uncommon for children to forget early occurrences, especially traumatic ones that could all too easily be buried. He had read about a peculiar condition while staying in Sienne, of a variety of amnesia that came only after witnessing tragic events. One such case study featured a girl whose entire village had been killed. Her mother's body had shielded her, and only the fact that the raiders did not check beneath it had spared her life.
Neighboring patrols had found her, blood spattered and playing with her dolls despite the carnage around her. They were only able to piece together the story via the details surrounding her: a ripped piece of the mother's skirt, dried blood that corresponded to the mother's wound found exactly on her daughter – as if she had been clinging to her mother just before the attack occurred.
The girl never did regain her memory of that time, and the case study ended with the author deeming it lucky for her own psyche as such a memory would surely drive her to madness.
Though none could tell of the black feathers that she clung too, larger than the ordinary ravens and too lustrous to be a simple crow laguz.
.
"Don't let go of my hand," Ike said.
It was so warm. His pulse fluttered like wind rustling through trees, like light slipping through branches like a memory so important, it shaped his entire being.
Soren held on, and the places he had been and the people he had met on this journey are suddenly non-important. When he slept it was across from Ike's room, close enough to ensure that he could rise in an instant if he was needed.
The other mercenaries are kind, and despite their many kindnesses, Soren could only feel suspicion for them. How many seemingly kind strangers would be a poor child's downfall. He had told himself to trust no one, but he broke that rule and modified it until it fit the only person who had earned the right.
Trust no one but Ike
This place is still a better home than the shanties, huts, or gutters he had stayed in. Even if this wasn't a fortuitous find, Soren would leave it if Ike hadn't been here.
No matter what the past or present or future could bring, Soren would keep himself by Ike. Even if it took his whole life, even if Ike never remembered his face. Then, Soren would forge a new bond.
Each touch is a memory of his first taste of happiness, however fleeting it had been. Soren finds himself in each touch that was given, from casual brushes and hands lifting him up to a steadying hand upon his own.
And the world can rot outside these walls. Kingdoms could want for a prince, scholars want for a pupil, armies for a tactician for his life had only one purpose now.
"Can you help me with the history studies this afternoon? Titania is a lot tougher teacher than Rhys ever was."
"Of course, Ike."
