Author: Rapis-Razuri
Beta: N/A
Prompt: Dancing
Word Count: 1,311
Notes: Okay so...the last chapter was kinda loaded. Here's some fluff for a change. In case you haven't really picked it up, I am writing under the assumption that there's some truth to Inigo's claim that he's been in love with Lucina since "the moment they met."

While here's probably...okay, there's DEFINATELY some astronomy fail on my part, but the constellation Cygnus/the swan being referenced to as a heron is not a mistake. All for the sake of FE9/10 references, yay.

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Inigo couldn't sleep.

As he lay staring up at the roof of his tent, he couldn't help but muse at the irony of it. When he first landed in this time, it was his uncertainty and anxiety that kept him awake at night. He had thought that it would get better for him once he found Olivia and Henry, but nope, he was still plagued with insomnia. Perhaps it was just that he had joined the Shepherds just in time for the Conquest of Valm. War meant more fighting and more fighting meant...

Then again, nobody was foolish enough to think that changing the future would be easy.

Sighing, he got out of the cot. Since he couldn't sleep, maybe he'll go out and find a clearing where he could practice some dance steps. He did always want to show Olivia the second half of her favorite dance to him and now, if he could just finish it, he definitely could.

He picked up his sword since he never went anywhere without it and stepped out of the tent just in time to see someone else leave camp.

Lucina. Where was she going in the middle of the night?

Concerned for the princess, Inigo abandoned his original plan and followed her. She wasn't heading to where Sully and Kjelle had set up the practice dummies to practice her swordplay, as he had first thought, but rather to a nearby hill. She sat down on the grass, leaning back with her hands behind her, gazing up at the heavens.

Stargazing? Inigo leaned back to look at the night sky. It does look much clearer than in the future once he thought about it. He took a step to get a better view of the sky since he was still in the shade of the trees and stepped on a branch. Lucina immediately got into a fighting stance at the sound. Inigo supposed that kind of instinct was something they will never part with.

"Who's there?" she demanded, a hand on Falchion's hilt. Inigo stepped out from his hiding place. "Inigo? What are you doing here?"

"Couldn't sleep," he replied with a shrug, "I saw you leaving camp and decided to follow you." Worried that this might make him sound like a stalker, he quickly added, "its not safe to be wandering around at night by yourself."

"Then what were you going to do before you saw me?"

"I thought I'd...practice for a bit."

She arced an eyebrow. "By yourself?"

"Touche," he sighed, "I told you what I was up to. What about you?"

"I...couldn't really sleep either," Lucina confessed, "so I decided to come out and look at the stars."

Simply wanting a reason to spend time with her rather than actually wanting to look at the stars, he asked "may I join you?"

"Of course." Lucina lay down on her back again. Inigo followed her lead. He didn't know much about the patterns the stars formed so they simply looked like scattered dots of light to him.

"So...which constellations can you see tonight?"

"Hmm..." She was silent for a moment as the surveyed the sky. Then she pointed upwards. "There's the heron."

Inigo tried looking at where she was pointing. "I don't see it."

"Here, come closer." She scooted over so the two of them were each occupying half of where she had been lying before. "Those three stars are the body..." she pointed up again, tracing a path for him to follow. "And those four stars, two on each side, are the wings."

Admittedly, being so close to her made it hard to concentrate, but Inigo looked again. He tried imagining the bird with its its wings spread in flight...

"Can you see it now?"

There! "Yes!" Inigo grinned, "yes, I see it." As happy as he was to be able to see it, the specific constellation reminded him of something. "Mother used to sing this song about a heron princess before she...you know."

"Really?" she asked softly, knowing how difficult it was for him to talk about his parents' deaths. She turned her body so she was facing him. "Do you think you can you tell me?"

"It's not a happy tale."

A beat.

"I still want to hear."

"Alright, alright,"

Some of the finer details were lost to him, but he remembered enough to tell a coherent story. Lucina was an attentive listener. He'd be lying if he said that he didn't like the feeling of having her eyes on him and him alone.

"So in the end, she was reunited with her love, but her home was destroyed."

"Told you it wasn't a happy story."

"Did the forest ever recover?"

Inigo blinked, "I...never actually thought of that before. It was just how Mother told it to me, so I always assumed it ended like that."

Lucina sighed and rolled onto her back again. "There's an old Tellius myth that goes like the song where a forest destroyed by a fire was restored through a galdr sung by a pair of herons."

"That may be what the ballad was based upon. The forest's destruction that is," Inigo admitted, "but both the song and the dance choreography ends with the princess staring sadly at the moon."

There was some silence before Lucina proposed, "well...why don't you add in the rebuilding yourself?"

"...What?"

"Why don't you write another act with the kingdom restored yourself?" she explained, "I mean...you do dance, right?"

"Yeah, I do," Inigo said absently. However, he sat up when he realized what he just agreed to. "Wait, how do you know that I dance?"

"Before all this, I saw you one day," Lucina admitted, sitting up as well, nervously ruffling her hair. "Near Southtown, after...after we failed to save the weaver and his family...I think. You were so...amazing."

He was grateful that it was dark enough to hide the fact that her compliment had turned him beet red. "I don't think I'm amazing enough to overwrite the ending for a routine that's been around for years." Even as he said this, her words had lit a spark of inspiration in him.

"Is that so?" she sounded genuinely disappointed. "I thought you of all people would be capable of changing a bittersweet ending into a happy one. After all, isn't that what we're here for?"

"Hmm...when you put it that way," Inigo jumped to his feet. He turned to face the princess with a hand outstretched and the other behind him with a little bow. "May I have this dance milady?"

"What?" Lucina exclaimed, flustered. "You can't possibly–!"

"Hey, this was your idea, Luce. You can't back out now."

"I can't dance."

"Have you ever tried?" he rebutted. She shook her head. "look at it this way: my mother learned how to fight by applying what she knew about dancing into swordplay. Why not try the inverse?"

"Apply what I know about sword fighting to dancing?"

"Right."

"But...why me?"

Because I love you, he wanted to say, but now was not the time. Like the heron princess in the story, Lucina would never be truly happy with him, or anyone, unless she completed her mission. His feelings for her were strong enough for him to want her to be happy first and foremost. "Because I don't see any other lovely ladies around. Do you?"

Lucina sighed deeply and buried her face in her hands. "You're not going to change your mind are you?"

"Nope."

She lifted her head and, admitting defeat, took his extended hand. With a broad grin, he pulled her to her feet.

"I guess I can humor you. Just this once."

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