The first few lunches after Miriel's departure, the group she had acquired in the teachers' lounge sat elsewhere, mostly Lissa's office, so that their lunch experience wasn't overshadowed by people asking questions about what had happened with Miriel. They as a collective whole knew more than almost anyone else working in the school, but there had been some things they had been told in secrecy, like the name and specific statistics about her newborn son, and those were the things everyone wanted to know.
By the middle of the following week, lunch in the office wasn't as fun as it had been before, not after some kid came in while throwing up and put a damper on the conversation the teachers and Lissa were having. They had to move back to the lounge for this sort of meeting, they knew, but how were they going to be able to do that without being grilled over their friend's situation to the millionth degree? There had to be something to happen that would take everyone's minds off of the near-birth that had happened at the school, and if it could be something new and fresh that wouldn't call back to the proposal that had happened before that, everyone would have appreciate that too.
Taking matters into his own hands, Stahl promised that he would create something so great that it would get everyone talking about it rather than the recent events. "Yeah, we know how well that's going to go over, you damn fool," Sully said to him, reaching up to his messy hair and grabbing a large handful of it to tug a few times. "But do this right, however the hell you plan on doing it, and I might reward you somehow. Might."
"I was going to do this just for the good of everyone, but if your reward includes food…" He blinked a few seconds, stunned that he had even considered taking up the brash woman's offer. "I mean, I'm doing it anyway! Your food reward doesn't mean a thing."
"Don't bribe him into doing this, Sully. We need him to be thinking clearly, and if his mind's on what sort of expensive dinner date you might take him on after this, he won't be focusing on his plan at all." Frederick, stopping Sully from tugging more at Stahl's hair, shook his head. "In fact, I don't think he's focusing on anything but the food reward now."
Stahl put a finger up as if he was going to make a point, but lowered it when it dawned on him that Frederick was right. "I-I'm going to go now. I've got a lot to get ready for this thing, and I can't let myself get distracted by pretty ladies promising me food." He got up from his seat on the edge of the office table and ran out the door, leaving everyone behind in the office to stare at one another.
"What the hell just happened there?" Sully's face was locked in an expression of almost rage as she spoke. "I never promised a food reward! Damn it, that man is going to eat me out of my rent money for the month! Whatever he pulls off to get us back into the lounge without answering questions we don't want to be asked, it better be worth that sacrifice."
"Knowing him, it's probably gonna involve him gettin' his students to bake cakes. That, or he's gonna try it himself and eat all the batter again." Vaike laughed, remembering the last time cakes had been made back in that corner classroom. "Hopefully he's plannin' something special, like a party or maybe a feast, yanno? A feast would be awesome."
"Let's not get hypothetical over this. One of Stahl's feasts requires ample planning and as far as we know, he started planning this today. It will, sadly, most likely be the cakes again, which is not a bad thing, but it won't save us from questioning when we walk back into the lounge." Frederick looked at Vaike, who had still been laughing after he had finished speaking but had gone silent at the grim reality that it was once again going to be time for cakes. "I feel the same way as you, though. His feasts were something to behold when we were students here, and he has only gotten better at designing them."
"Last time ol' Vaike was part of one of 'em was back at the senior dinner 'fore we graduated. Kinda wish it was gonna be one of those that he surprised all of us with, but I get it, bakin' and eatin' the batter is easier than making meals for everyone." There was actual, audible sadness in Vaike's voice talking about the feasts, which only made Lissa curious about how great they really were, if her fiancé was wanting one so badly and if Frederick was using a word like "sadly" when referring to the alternate option.
She would get to find out soon enough, on the day where she got to work and found an envelope taped to her door, her name written on it in almost illegible handwriting. When she opened it and something she recognized as one of those dollar store thank-you cards came out, she smiled, because chances were that what she now held was a message from a student who meant well. The card, though, was an invite to the teachers' lounge that day at lunch, to come with nothing but an empty stomach, because what would be waiting there would gladly fill it. For the first half of the day, Lissa had to restrain herself from digging into what she had brought herself for lunch, simply because she didn't want to spoil her appetite for whatever was waiting in the lounge. But she couldn't fully restrain herself, because to do so would require not giving herself any sort of nutrition for her baby to inevitably sap from her, and the last thing she wanted to do was get lightheaded or faint in the school.
By the time the lunch hour was upon them, she'd managed to resist eating most of her own lunch, only having picked out a couple things to snack on, so when Vaike came by to walk with her down to the lounge, she wasn't as shaky as she could have been, but she was still pretty unstable. "Sorry, I tried to follow his advice of going with an empty stomach," she explained, leaning up against Vaike to keep her balance as they walked, "but I don't think it was a very good idea."
"You shoulda known that you didn't need to follow that rule. Now you're just wobblin' and waddlin' and it's gonna take us forever to get down there." She gasped and smacked him, which in turn caused him to stop their forward motion. "Hey, what was that for? Somethin' I said just then?"
"Yes! Now I'm going to be super paranoid about people watching me walk and making fun of me! You shouldn't have mentioned me waddling, you jerk!" Smacking him again, they both found a reason to laugh after, because she really was taking offense to something she had known she did for several months. "Let's just get down there so I can actually eat something, please and thank you."
He wasn't one to deny her what she wanted, so they started walking again, eventually getting to the lounge door, which was already open. He peeked inside and based on the low whistle he gave, was clearly impressed. "This might just look better than the last one 'a these he did around here. C'mon in, there's probably enough feast to last a lifetime!"
"I think you're exaggerating a bit," Lissa said, but she followed Vaike's lead into the room and was pleasantly surprised that he wasn't exaggerating much at all. Every surface in the room, aside from a couple of the tables, was covered in different dishes. There were a lot of teachers milling around, picking this-or-that from the dishes before leaving the lounge with their meals, no questions asked, period. "Or maybe not. How did he manage this one?"
"Sully must've put a fire under him when she mentioned a reward. Stahl really likes his food, and he'll do anything for it. Kinda like how the Vaike'll do anything for his lady love." He planted a quick kiss on her cheek, before they made their way to start getting their own plates of food. There were so many things to pick between, getting it all to fit on their plates was hard, but somehow they managed, and once they had everything they were sitting down at a table with some of their friends, one of which was the man who put everything together.
"You guys look like you're impressed," Stahl commented when he saw the plates of food all of his friends had before them. "Like, really impressed. I think I did a good job with this one, huh? Worthy of a reward of a nice dinner?"
The woman who had never exactly promised him that rolled her eyes. "I guess so. Food's tasty, people aren't talking to us about things we don't need to talk about, it's all perfect. Looks like you're going to get that, er, damn dinner I guess I offered you."
"I like the sound of that! I'll be up at your place tomorrow night then, so think about what you're going to do for me!" He looked so excited, even when he saw that Sully wasn't even sharing a bit of his enthusiasm.
"I'm curious, Stahl. Where did you find the funds to put this together?" Frederick, taking a moment between bites of his meal, looked to the man responsible for everything with a curious glance. "Feeding a small army like this must take a lot of money."
"Uh, I don't think I'm actually supposed to say where the money came from for this. It's a secret between me and someone else. Could lose my job if I shared it." He awkwardly chuckled, trying to find something to change the topic to. "So, anyone want to hear about what I made for the dessert course?"
That night, when on the car ride home, Lissa could have sworn she smelled the fragrant aromas of the teachers' lounge inside the car, but when she brought it to attention everyone seemed to ignore her. Had she gotten so attached to the tastes of what she had gotten to dine on that she was imagining the smell? It wasn't a question she'd be able to answer, and it was going to bother her—until later that same night when she went to grab herself something to snack on from the fridge and found entire containers of leftovers from the feast, easily enough to feed the family for a week.
Robin caught her going through some of the containers and had to put a stop to it. "I can't let you do that, Lissa," she said, trying to convince the younger woman to put everything back where she had found it. "Those things are for your brother, not for you."
"Chrom doesn't need all of this," Lissa replied, refusing to stop her searching. "He can learn to share a bit, can't he?"
"He can, but since the entire reason this was allowed to happen in the first place was me reminding him that, for the first year he and I were married, he would constantly compare my food to Stahl's, I don't think he's going to want to share." A mischievous glimmer in her eye, Robin took everything Lissa had and put it back where it belonged. "Now please do me a favor and don't go through that again. Chrom will have our heads if he doesn't get to eat feasts for as long as possible."
Lissa sighed in defeat. "Yeah, but he's at least gotten to have feasts before this. I hadn't, and it was really good. Can't I have a little bit?" She held up two fingers placed closely together to symbolize how little she wanted. "It's not just for me, but for baby Owain too, you know."
"I know, but I can't let you. If you want something so badly…" Robin looked around the kitchen, trying to find a suitable suggestion for a substitution. "Oh! You can have some of the cake that Stahl let us bring home. He insisted it wasn't touched, and that it's a full cake, but something tells me that he couldn't stop himself from eating half of it. It's kind of small."
From in the living room on the other side of the wall, Vaike could be heard losing his mind in laughter over the accusation of Stahl eating part of one of his cakes.
With as slowly as the semester had started, it came rushing to a close, and with the end of classes came the tradition-filled graduation ceremony that took so much planning and effort to put together. Like the year before, the votes for who should give the speeches at the ceremony fell in a predictable way, but this time Chrom wasn't going to be able to fall back on some rule that would keep his sister from having to take the stage at some point. She had rightfully received the most votes for almost every speech, and that meant she was going to give one, barring some catastrophe.
And she was fairly convinced that some catastrophe was just begging to happen. "I get it that they want me to do this, because some of them knew me when I went to school and for those who don't, I'm still a cool part of the school, but I really don't think that this is going to work out." As Chrom had told her the news that she was going to be giving a speech, Lissa had been trying to get her graduation gown on, and by the time she had said anything she had already ripped one of the sides of it. "Mostly because I'm so going to trip and fall and hurt myself if I have to get on stage, but partially because I won't be wearing what I'm supposed to be. Do you really want me up there in something that isn't my gown?"
"No, but the students asked, and if I deny them this request they will most definitely revolt." He looked at his sister, with her clearly ripped gown on, and shook his head. "You should have considered something like this when you decided to have that baby."
"His name is Owain, remember? And it wasn't like I planned to have him." Lissa, struggling then to get the gown off without ripping it more, gave a deep sigh. "Nice to hear that you still aren't okay with him existing, though. He's not even the problem here, it's just everything that goes along with having him is the problem." Sighing again, she let the gown hang back down, the front of it clearly straining against her stomach. "If I were just a little smaller, this would be okay…"
"I think that makes him the problem, Lissa." He shook his head at his sister, before helping her get the gown off, only ripping it minimally more in the process. "But okay, let's just blame everything that's happened to you on something else. Vaike, perhaps? Would me blaming this on him make it better, or worse?"
She balled the gown up and threw it at him. "Equally bad, actually. Don't insult either of the guys I love, please, not when there's more important things to be worrying about right now. Like how we're going to find something that isn't just ugly maternity clothing for me to wear on stage when I give the students the speech they want." Her eyes widened in fear. "Wait, what kind of speech am I even giving? One of the ones they write?"
"Right now, let's worry about finding something for you to wear. If we can't find anything, I've got no choice but to pick someone else for the job." Laughing at having had the ripped gown thrown at him, he threw it back at his sister, hitting her in the face. When it connected, he covered his mouth in shock. "I didn't mean to do that. Meant to hit the wall or for it to sail past you, but not to hit you."
For a moment, she stood in silence, before breaking into giggles. "You're really bad at not hurting or breaking things, and I'm glad you chose my face to hit rather than something you could have broken." She then turned serious about the situation at hand. "Okay, so, finding a gown that could fit me shouldn't be too hard, right? I mean, mine was super small because I was super small, but now I'm not even close to small, and that means I need to find a gown that was made for someone really big but really short."
"That's not going to happen in the time we have before the ceremony, but I think if we can find one belonging to someone who's always been built fairly sturdily, we'll be fine." Chrom's eyes darted to the closet in the room. "Did Vaike put his stuff in there when he moved in? I'm sure his graduation gown would work in this pinch. His broad shoulders would have made him need a bigger one, and while it would be too long, we could find a way to pin it up, I bet. Robin's usually got some creative fix for that."
"He did put his stuff in the closet, but I wouldn't go through there if I were you. He's been stashing some more 'secret' stuff from me lately, all for surprises he's planning." She too looked to the closet. "But this is sort of a thing we need to do now, and I don't know where he is, so go for looking for it."
"You don't know where he is?" There was concern in his voice as he asked, and when she repeated that she didn't, he took a deep breath. "Let's hope that his gown is in there, and that he doesn't get back soon. If you're sure there's stuff you aren't meant to see, leave the room, and I'll come let you know if I find it."
She saw no reason why that wasn't a good idea, and so she slowly made her way out of her bedroom and out into the living room, collapsing onto the couch once she got there. "I don't know how I'll even manage standing on stage for a speech," she said to herself, shaking her head a bit. "I'm not exactly built for this sort of thing. Small and skinny ladies don't make very sturdy pregnant women." For the next half hour, she just sat there, occasionally psyching herself up about how she'd be able to handle giving a speech, before reminding herself of all what could go wrong with the situation, and ultimately just spending most of the time thinking about how, even after the past months of being told to refer to her baby by his name, Chrom still didn't do that sometimes. Was she angry about that? Not exactly, but she wasn't happy about it in the slightest.
She was broken from her thoughts when the front door opened, and running into the house came little Lucina, what was left of an ice cream cone in her hand (and all over her face). "Auntie Lissa, I got a cone!" she squealed, jumping onto the couch and pushing the cone remnants into Lissa's face. "I got a cone for you!"
"It looks more like you had a cone for me, Lucy. Did you eat it?" The little girl insisted that she hadn't, contrary to the mess on her face and the fact that her cone was almost completely gone. "I don't know, little miss, it looks like you're lying to me."
"She ain't. That was hers that she's carryin' around still." Both Lissa and Lucina turned to see who spoke, and Vaike grinned when he saw them looking at him. He was holding an uneaten cone in one hand, and one that was partially gone in the other. "We might've found an ice cream truck while we were out at the park, and she was so excited 'bout it that she convinced me to buy her a cone, me a cone, and you a cone too."
"Yeah!" Shoving what was left of hers in her mouth, Lucina started bouncing up and down on the couch, watching as Vaike handed off the untouched cone to Lissa, before she started eagerly watching her aunt eat a small bit of what she was given. "Gotta have ice cream! Baby Owain likes it, right?"
Lissa shrugged, loving her niece's enthusiasm about things but also unsure of how she could even answer that. Thankfully, she had Vaike there to answer for her. "I told ya already, Lucy, he likes whatever his momma there likes. Since she likes ice cream, I betcha anything he does too."
"She likes me. So he likes me too?" Lucina bounced a bit more, nearly falling off the couch in the process, which in turn made both Lissa and Vaike try to catch her. This, in conjunction with them both holding ice cream cones, meant that there was soon a mess to clean up, although only one of the two cones landed on the floor. The second one, which had been dropped simply where it had been held and landed upside-down on the top of Lissa's stomach, earned a lot of amused laughter from Lucina when she saw it. "He does like ice cream! Look!"
"What's all this about ice cream out here?" Chrom asked, coming into the room to see the messes, and his daughter shrieked at the sight of him. "Whatever it is, it better not involve someone having given her some. Last thing we need is for her to be losing her mind because of all the sugar."
"Sorry 'bout that, got so caught up in her excitement that ol' Vaike forgot he won't supposed to give her anything." Too busy looking at where his cone had dropped, on the hardwood floor, to look and see if Chrom was disappointed in his decision, Vaike sighed. "Probably shoulda thought this one through a bit better. Note to self, don't try to grab the fallin' kid with the hand holdin' the ice cream."
"You and I both need to learn that lesson," Lissa said with a laugh, pointing to where her cone had landed. "I mean, I shouldn't have reached for her anyway, but still. Now we've both got messes to clean up." The tone she spoke with was a hint to him to go get something to clean with, and once he was gone in search of something he could use, she turned to look at Chrom, who was holding a bigger gown than the one she'd been trying on before. "You actually found it, huh?"
"Took maybe a minute, tops. He put it in the back. Most of the time I spent in there was comparing this to some of your clothes, and I think it'll work. You might look ridiculous in it, because it's longer than you are tall, but you'd look more ridiculous if you walked on stage wearing the one you ripped open." He chuckled, before taking a seat next to his sister and having an ice cream-covered Lucina sit on his lap. "Now, while we wait for him to clean up the mess he's made, let's start discussing this speech thing."
Lissa gave a small, hesitant smile. "Yeah, probably for the best. You didn't say which one I'd be giving. Please don't tell me that I'm giving my own speech." She looked at him for the reaction she wanted, but the way he was awkwardly scratching the back of his head told her otherwise. "They want me to go up there and make a huge fool of myself, don't they?"
"To be fair, I think they want to hear you talk about how life can change quickly after graduation. Give them a speech that lets them know that whatever they're planning, they can most likely kiss it goodbye once they leave the school for the last time." Chrom grabbed Lucina, being careful to not touch anywhere she was sticky, and drew her close to his chest. "The same thing happened for both of us. We left that place just to get taken back by circumstance, and then our lives changed with children. I really think they need to hear about that sort of thing."
They kept talking about how that would make a good topic for the speech, having to clue Vaike into what was happening when he came back into the room with his cleaning supplies. He was thrilled that his fiancée would be getting to give a speech, although he first did express a fear about her possibly tripping while getting up onto the stage (something Chrom responded to by asking, "Is her climbing stairs really that big of a problem?" and they both said that it really was). And so, with the three of them, plus Lucina's inputs of needing to talk about her baby cousin, and eventually Robin coming in and offering her advice, a speech was concocted and penned, ready to be delivered at the graduation ceremony at the end of the week.
It was a foregone conclusion that Lissa would end up crying at some point during the graduation, not like the previous year when she saw one of her best friends graduate, but just at any point. That point came when Chrom started the ceremony, and she wasn't sure why that was, because he was giving the same introduction he did every year—until he began talking about Emmeryn, that was. The tears came harder then, as he listened to him get choked up at the microphone as he talked about how much his sister had meant to the school, and since it had been five years since her passing, it was time to do something big to honor her. "Over the summer, a statue in Emmeryn's honor will be constructed in the school commons, so that students decades from now can know the woman who gave them their education opportunity," he said, looking out on everyone in the auditorium to see reactions. People who had known her were nodding in approval, some were wiping back tears, and then there was Lissa, sitting in the first row of teachers and staff, bawling her eyes out, tears staining the front of her cream-and-green gown. "I think, after mentioning one sister, that this would be a good time to hand things off to the other. Lissa, could you please take the stage for your speech?"
That wasn't how or when she had expected her contribution to be introduced, and the round of applause that greeted her as she stood and slowly made her way to the front of the room, carefully ascending the stairs onto the stage, and approached the podium caught her wildly off guard. She was still crying when she got there, and she hoped that her voice wouldn't be shaking when she tried to give her speech. "Thank you, Chrom," she started, giving a smile to her brother as he passed her the microphone before taking his seat. "And thank you, everyone who asked for me to be up here today on this special occasion. It's a real honor, to be told you're giving a speech at a graduation two years after you were up on the very same stage getting your diploma. An honor I wasn't sure I was going to want."
The crowd gave a collective laugh, and she stepped out from behind the podium, trying to keep her walking from looking more like wobbling as she headed towards one of the sides of the stage. "Well, you know, I first had to ask myself, 'why do they want me giving a speech? I'm not a teacher.' But then I realized, I know exactly why you want to hear me speak! It's not because I have anything smart to say, but because I've done so much memorable stuff in my two years working here!" Reaching the edge, she looked out on half the people at the ceremony—and was shocked to see Ricken, Maribelle, and Donnel sitting in the crowd, all waving wildly at her. She had known that the first two were home from school, and the third would be back from the farm to see them, but she hadn't known they'd be there, and the only reason they really had to be there was to hear her speech. "I-I mean, how many of the new graduates really remember me from when I was a student? Raise your hands if you do."
The hands that raised were few and far between. "And raise your hand if you know me just because of me doing my job." A few more hands went into the air. "See, I'm not memorable because of being me. But if I asked if you knew me because of what happened at prom, I'm sure almost all of you would say that you did. That's okay, because I think I'd rather be remembered for the fun stuff than my job, especially since I'm just some medical tech who's meant to only be used in emergencies. Did you know that? 's part of my official title. But I work like I'm a nurse, which I'm not! I wanted to be one, though.
"You can ask some people who are here today if that's true, by the way." Starting to walk towards the other edge of the stage, Lissa took a deep breath before starting on the part of the speech she was looking least forward to: the part where she would probably make herself start crying again. "One of my friends, he'll tell you about how I told him I'd become a nurse—well, more specifically, one meant to work with children, just so that I could help women in need. And that was my dream! I wanted to go to school, to become someone who could help women and their babies out. If present me could go back three years and tell past me that there was no way that was going to happen, past me would probably slap present me. That's how serious I was about wanting to chase that dream.
"I was fifteen when my sister died, which was when the 'nurse' part of the dream started. Would I have saved Emmeryn if I had medical skills? No, because no one knows how she died. But I could have tried." She sniffled, and the crowd seemed captivated by what she was saying, a good sign. "At that time, I was living with my brother and his best friend at their place, because I was still in school and they were both in college. I'm not going to get into Chrom's story here, because I'm sure everyone knows it, but when Emmeryn died, he had to take her role here at this school, which meant he didn't have time for his own education. I always told myself, I wasn't going to do what he did and stop going to school. I was going to follow my education dreams and become successful in life. But then, after I graduated from this very school, Chrom came to me, telling me that he had a job for me here, that I could work here with just a little bit of education and a summer of classes, and everything would be fine. I totally believed him."
"As you should have," she heard him say, and she turned from looking at the crowd to see him smiling at what she was saying. "It was the best decision for you."
"It wasn't me going to school to be a nurse, but I sort of became this school's nurse, and that was fine with me. There's always time later for chasing my dreams. Except then I fell in love. Hard. A story none of you students need reminding of, because you've been there for all of it. You've heard Vaike talking about me in his classes. You've seen me wobbling through the halls because we're having a baby." She had to pause there for the clapping and cheering that made it impossible for her to keep talking, her face lit up in a huge smile at hearing how much support they had, and when she looked to Vaike she saw that he was grinning bigger than she was. "And I don't need to mention this, but you were there when he proposed to me, and I accepted it. You students were just as much a part of our love story as anything, and I have to thank you for that.
"I also have to tell you that none of this was what I saw myself experiencing when I was still a student here. Your life changes so much when you graduate that you need to stay on your toes. Don't get too invested in what you think you want to do, because something will come along and change your plans forever." Walking back to the podium, she knew she had one last thing she was going to say to these students with the time that she had, and she was going to make the best of it: "And finally, whatever you do, don't think it's a good idea to have a baby young. Just trust me, and my brother, on that one."
The applause that followed was deafening, and she was taken so much by surprise by it that she started crying tears of joy as she handed the microphone back to Chrom, and he hugged her tightly for a few moments, telling her how great she did and how everything had gone perfectly. The rest of the ceremony, she couldn't focus on what was going on around her, because her mind was too filled with the reactions to her speech, but even in her most distracted of states she didn't miss when, halfway through the students taking the stage for their diplomas, a familiar little girl ran up in between someone's legs, disrupting everything just to cling to her father. It earned laughter, but mostly it made Chrom turn bright red as he tried to handle what was going on.
After the ceremony was over, Lissa hung back in the auditorium, even after most everyone had left. She just sat in one of the chairs, reflecting on what had happened so far in her time since she had graduated—something that she felt she should do after openly talking about things. "Are you ever going to join everyone?" she heard Maribelle's voice asking, and she looked up from the spot on the floor to see both her and Ricken standing there, arms linked with one another. "Come on, just because you've had a long night doesn't mean you shouldn't at least try to enjoy the festivities."
"Yeah, if you stay in here, you're going to miss Maribelle ripping Frederick's arms off if she gets the chance," Ricken added, earning himself a death glare from the woman he was linked with. "It's true. You said you'd do that to him if you got the chance after he stood you up over spring break."
"I am aware of what I said, Ricken dear, but that was meant to be between you and me, not you, me, and Lissa. Although if she heard why I want to remove his arms, I'm sure she wouldn't judge too much." That was enough bait for Lissa to bite, and Maribelle seemed almost happy to share her story. "If you want to know, he and I had agreed to try some sort of relationship after that failure of a date, and we attempted it for well over a year. It seemed innocent enough, just communicating through messages and phone calls, but then over spring break he offered to meet up with me since I would be home. I went to the meeting place and he never showed up! I put on my nicest dress and everything for him!"
Lissa's eyes widened. "Why did you never tell me you were actually trying to get with him? I could have told you forever ago that he has a girlfriend." Mentally she added in mention of a child too, but the mere topic of another woman had to have been bad enough.
"I think the correct word would be 'had,' Lissa, because I found out he had been using me as a romantic out from her and did the moral thing. I contacted her and let her know that she had been dating a cheater, and that was the end of that. She promised me that her and their precious child—poor thing, being fathered by a disgusting man like that—would be leaving as soon as they could." Maribelle smiled, causing Lissa to widen her eyes even more at the revelation. "And now if I get the chance, that man's arms are being taken as a war prize."
"Want to help me in restraining her?" offered Ricken, as he started getting tugged away by Maribelle. "I think together we could keep her from him. Donny said he was gonna help out, but you know how his mom is, wanting him home to help with the chickens or whatever."
Contemplating that for just a second, Lissa carefully stood up and linked her arm in Maribelle's open one. "I don't know how much help me and my gigantic belly are going to be here, but I think I've got a plan for how we'll make this work out. That'll be by finding a few people we could talk to." Her desire to leave the nearly empty room finally there, she slowly led them through the throng of people outside to find everyone she was wanting to talk to still standing around, not really doing much. While they did have to restrain Maribelle a bit when they saw Frederick off in the distance, when he was spotted also happened to be when one of the few people Lissa hoped to see also became visible.
It wasn't Lissa who called attention to that person, though. "Is that miss Miriel?" Ricken asked, pointing with his free hand at the tall redhead holding a child in her arms. "And did she have a baby?"
"Yeah, that's definitely her! Come on, we've got to go say hi to her! I haven't seen her since the day her son was born, anyway." Together, with both of them pulling an angry woman between them, they were able to get over to where Miriel was standing, and she was only slightly shocked to see who had approached her.
"Why hello there Lissa. It is a pleasure to get to see you on such a big night in your life." Snuggling her baby close to her chest, Miriel smiled at Lissa for just a second before looking to Ricken. "And you, Ricken, how have things gone for you in your first year away at university? We must do some catching up, and right now, while Laurent sleeps, might just be a perfect time."
He agreed, and they started chatting up a storm, something that would have upset Lissa had she not been transfixed at looking at the baby Miriel was holding. He was small, dressed in something that looked handmade with love, and, from what she could tell, seemed to have inherited some form of the red hair that both of his parents had. "He's so precious…" she whispered, leaning to get a closer look.
"Would you care to hold him? It would be good practice for you to reacquaint yourself with holding an infant before you have your own to raise." Just because Miriel had offered, she had to accept, and after warily unlinking arms with Maribelle she took the little boy into her care, looking down on him with such love. From the new angle, she could tell he looked just like his mother, and that made her appreciate him that much more. "You look fondly upon him, as I would expect anyone with motherhood around the corner to do with a child. Perhaps once he and your little one are older, they will be the greatest of friends."
"I'd like that, actually," she said in response, watching as the little boy gave a small yawn, his eyes closed in slumber. "I'd love for little Laurent and my baby Owain to be great friends. It would be so nice."
"What's this about our boy havin' friends before he's born?" Vaike, coming up behind Lissa and resting his elbows on her shoulders, looked down at the baby in her arms. "Nice lookin' kid, but the Vaike ain't sure he's gonna be worthy of bein' in Owain's presence."
"Oh, hush you. I'm sure they'll be the best friends ever." Lissa shrugged Vaike off of her and continued to stare in wonder at the baby she was holding. He was causing her to feel things that she wasn't sure how to react to, feelings of love and nurturing, but she knew that soon enough, she'd know exactly what to do with those desires. It was just a game of patience at that point, one that would come to its end in due time.
Owain was born in mid-July, over a week later than he had been expected and a lot bigger than anyone had figured he'd be, to the point that there hadn't been any way he was going to come into the world on his own. That dashed the (never exactly promised) dreams that Maribelle had held about getting to help with the birthing process of her best friend's child, because the sorts of medical techniques that were needed were far beyond what one entry-level law student who had dabbled in medical classes had on her, although she managed to sucker everyone into letting her be there for the birth anyway. Lissa would have preferred if it had been Chrom there in that place instead, but he had opted out of being in the room when things had started to get more complicated, saying that he wasn't going to be able to handle both of the kids that mattered to him having horror stories in terms of how they were born.
But ultimately everything was perfectly fine, and even though there were stitches and staples that hadn't been expected, at the end of the day, Lissa was able to hold the son she very much loved right next to her heart, which he already had control of with his perfect little hands decorated with ten little fingers. Everything about him was exactly as she had wanted it, nothing amiss in the slightest, and the best part about him was that he looked so much like her, yet so much like his father, that everyone who saw him in the days after his birth would argue over which parent had passed on more of their genes to him.
Of course, the loudest proponent for Owain looking most like his father was Vaike himself, who took the responsibility of having to take care of that boy faster than he'd ever taken any responsibility in his life. Fatherhood was a blessing to Vaike, especially since he could just stare at his son for hours and talk endlessly about how much the boy looked like him and what sorts of trouble that could cause in the future. But Lissa could never imagine her perfect little son ever getting in trouble, not when she'd be sitting with him and he'd just stare up at her, his eyes carrying the most innocent of gazes.
But summertime didn't just mean that they got to sit around and admire their new addition. There were still things to do relating to work; or, at least, that was the case for one of them. Trying to be fair and understanding, Chrom excused Lissa from having to go to any of the summer training sessions, just so that she could spend more time with Owain before school started and she'd have to separate from him while she worked. That meant she sat at the house all day, watching not just her son but Lucina as well, and if there was anyone more in love with the baby than his parents, it was that little girl. She meant well all the time, but her attempts at helping take care of him more often than not ended with him screaming and crying, her getting frustrated, and Lissa having to satisfy her strong motherly urges by holding her son nice and close to her until he calmed down.
By the time the school year started, she couldn't bring herself to leave him with anyone else, but at the same time she couldn't stop working without any notice. So on the first day of classes, while most of the staff was coming into the building with their books and lesson plans, she came in with a car seat, her son sleeping within it. Did Chrom approve of this decision? Not in the slightest. But he wasn't going to tell his sister that she couldn't do that, especially since he had not allowed her to not return to her position. That first day had a lot of students and almost all the teachers coming up to her to ask to see the baby, which she allowed as long as they didn't touch him. Some remarked on who they thought he looked like, some mentioned the wisps of pale blond hair on his head and how much he seemed to have, and others still just said that he was the cutest baby they'd ever seen. She took the compliments to heart, but she knew that they were just being friendly.
At every break between classes, Vaike came into her office to check up on her and Owain both, just to make sure they were fine. He talked a lot about how he was telling everyone who would listen about the wonders of being a father, and how proud it made him—and she would smile every time he said that he loved the experience. Listening to him gush on and on about the pride he felt just getting the chance to brag about someone he was half-genetically responsible for was one of those times in Lissa's life that she realized she wouldn't have ever wanted things any other way. It hadn't been perfect, and it hadn't been thought out before it happened, but everything that had happened to her over the time she'd worked at the school was the best anything that could have happened to her, and the cherry on top of that was having a son to love and treasure forever, with a man that she couldn't ever see herself without.
That evening, after almost everyone had left the building, while she waited for Vaike to finish up with whatever he was doing, Lissa found herself sitting in front of that new statue of her sister that was in the school commons. It was life-sized, so staring at it reminded her so much of when she'd sit before and stare up at the real Emmeryn, and as she could feel herself wanting to cry at the majesty of the moment, little whimpering sounds could be heard in the car seat beside her. "Aw, you're crying over Emm too, huh Owain?" she asked, quickly getting her son out of the seat and into her arms before he really did start crying. "I bet she would have loved you. No, wait, I bet she does love you. Right now."
The way the statue was erected, one of Emmeryn's arms was bent before her, as if she was meant to hold something with it, and while it wasn't one of the best ideas that Lissa had ever had, she thought to put Owain there, so that she could see what it could have been like if Emmeryn would have been able to hold him. She talked herself out of that idea quickly, especially when she looked down at her son and saw him resting on his side in her arms, one of his small little hands partially covering his face, but she could still that his infant gaze was not actually focusing on anything but was aimed in the general direction of the statue. He didn't need to be held by the statue for him to know her. She was there with them right then, sitting there looking at her replica.
Now she wasn't just Lissa's goddess, she was Owain's as well.
A/N: And just like that, it's over. Remember to check out the art linked in my profile (there's a couple pieces now, but I'll add more as I have the time to draw it)! Thanks for coming along this journey, and I hope you enjoyed it from beginning to end! Any reviews or favorites would be appreciated and would really show how much you liked the story...
...and would be a bit of incentive to get a sequel in the works. c:
