Chapter Twelve: Nothing

Seventeen, Emmeryn thought to herself, staring at the small ripples on the surface of her bath. She was submerged to the chin, and the warm water felt nice, but she continued to feel troubled. You became a woman grown this year. You've been able to bear children for four years.

It was surely wrong, but Phila's news had impressed a sort of urgency upon her. Drastic times, perhaps, called for drastic measures. She shut her eyes tightly and tried to imagine the captain in the bath with her. What was supposed to be attractive? Long, soft, pale hair tumbling out of her bun, over smooth shoulders and full breasts, painting stripes of moisture over her skin as she bathed. A perfectly curved waist and magnificent thighs, testaments to her mastery over beasts of the air.

Nothing. She felt nothing.

She squeezed her eyes tighter, tried Frederick next. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, water droplets rolling down all the hard ridges of muscle in between. How warm and firm his mouth would be on her hand, lapping up the water gathered between her fingers in the most sincere symbolism he could muster.

Nothing.

Emmeryn, what is the matter with you?

And no matter how hard she imagined, no matter how long she shut her eyes, she couldn't get her last conversation with Phila out of her head, the captain's red eyes too-level and so very calm:

Your Grace, now that you're well, there is something important that must be brought to your attention. I'm sure you know that soon marriage and heirs will become a concern.

Emmeryn didn't want to think about any of that yet. Emmeryn didn't want those things even when she did think about them. The idea was borderline repulsive. But she'd nodded, and she'd smiled.

With a long sigh, she sank under the water.

xXx

"Do we need to talk?" she asked Frederick the next evening as he brought her tea. He looked up at her in surprise as he set the pot down.

"Do we, milady?"

She just looked at him from the window seat for a while, wondering where to begin.

"I believe that the last time we spoke face-to-face, you had collapsed outside my door."

"'Collapsed' is a bit overdramatic, isn't it? I prefer to think it was more of a gentle easing into a sitting position."

"While delirious with fever."

"Milady was not faring much better." He straightened from the table, lowering his head. When Emmeryn realized what was coming she bit her lip. "But you're right. I caused you a great deal of trouble when you were already ill, and I had the audacity to apologize while you had too much medicine in you to even focus your eyes, let alone hear me. I'll say it again now. Forgive me for my carelessness. Forgive me for my selfishness."

"I don't want an apology from you," she said, forcefully, but he didn't take his words back. Confused, she repeated, "And what's this about selfishness?"

"I accepted your favour before I had earned it. It cannot be overlooked."

"Ah." She watched him as he brought her a teacup, though he wouldn't meet her eyes. "That's actually what I meant to discuss. Will you sit?"

He eyed her, but eventually unbuckled his sword and sank onto her sofa, pouring himself a cup of tea too. "Your Grace?"

"Why are you pushing yourself through all this training? I've gathered that some of the older members of the Guard think..." She trailed off, not knowing how much she should reveal. There was also the high chance that she didn't fully understand the problem or Frederick's feelings. He set his cup down without taking a single sip of his tea.

"They say I'm only here because I've been given the benefit of the doubt. That it's all due to the family I come from, because we've served yours for so many generations."

"Not a far-fetched assumption, I suppose, with how suddenly you were promoted."

"No, not in the slightest. But they don't know the truth."

"And what is the truth?"

His hands clenched over his knees. He wouldn't look at her.

"I'm here because you pitied me."

She had to stay silent, twirling her cup in her hands. There was nothing to say. It was indeed the truth. She'd spent so many afternoons watching him train alone, walk alone, eat alone. She'd seen his accuracy, his dedication, his chivalry. She'd loved him for it. She'd told him so, because he was so unable to love himself.

But what it had created for him was a nigh impossible task.

"I'm so sorry," she said finally. "As if your father's shadow wasn't enough, now you have to work your way out of mine. But Frederick...who I promoted was not a pathetic, lonely soldier I felt sorry for. Who I promoted was a zealous young man, who comes face-to-face with insurmountable difficulties and still hurls himself against them." She looked at him, finally, to see that he was finally looking back. "I understand now that I was naïve, and I only made things more difficult for you. Please know I never meant to. I just admired your spirit so much, at the time, just as I do now. Can you forgive me?"

"I don't," he echoed, "want an apology from you." And then he stood, crossed the room to her, peeled one of her hands from the warm edge of her tea cup. She thought he meant to kiss it, and he did, but he cradled it between his own hands for a long while first. "I am pleased to serve as one of your Guard, and pleased for the opportunity to prove myself to the others."

"It's not worth it if you work yourself to death over it."

"No. So I have another idea." He withdrew his hands and there was an odd spark in his eye as he turned away.

"And that is?"

"The first tournament since before the war will be held over the summer." He reached her door and pulled it open, but turned back. He was smiling the widest smile Emmeryn had seen from him in a long time. "I'm going to win it. Good day, Your Grace."

Odd. Emmeryn went back to nursing her cup, wondering about the sudden, almost breathless giddiness that had crept into his words.

xXx

It took Frederick a long while to realize it. Nigh on a year of giggling and flattery and brushed hands when he passed off a sleepy Lissa.

But it finally hit him one day, after he and Lissa herself had romped through the snow for a while. As the little princess ran off alone to topple the remains of the snowman army, her handmaids plucked at damp spots on his sleeves and fretted about his health. One even reached up to brush snow out of his hair. That was what did it, making him pause for a moment. Only Lissa and Emmeryn had ever touched his hair.

He wasn't sure how to proceed from there, outside of insisting that his illness was fully gone. He was not interested in courting. He had training to do. Goals to fulfill. Things to prove. Distractions simply would not fit into his schedule.

Yet they kept coming. Once he was well enough to get out of bed, he resumed his redoubled training, constantly lancing in the ring, as the lance was his weakest weapon. He should have known better, when he took a moment to think about it. Members of the Royal Guard enjoyed prestige, honour, and glory—even him, the least deserving. Phila, as one of the higher-ranked, had a veritable line of suitors patiently waiting for any opportunity to be at her side, knights and commoners and nobles from powerful houses, men and women both. That Frederick drew a small crowd of his own, particularly of lesser noblewomen while he practiced, should not have surprised him.

Though it did. The one unsurprised was Emmeryn.

One woman in particular had come each evening to watch him train. It was as if she knew that the sunset on her auburn curls cast a halo about her. Her eyes were a soft violet, wide and gentle, and her lips were always painted a russet bright enough to draw attention but worn with class and poise. She was kind, he came to learn, when they exchanged brief words each night. She had a little sister Lissa's age, whom she loved dearly, and they both moved to the palace to answer Emmeryn's call for playmates; she watched after her sister in her mother's stead, as her mother remained to run the household. Her passions were poetry, Valmese languages, and sewing tapestries. After enough of these conversations, she began offering him her handkerchief to dry his face. After a suitable number more, he finally accepted, tethered in place by curiosity: about her dreams, about specifics in her past, about what her red, red mouth would taste like.

Curiosity was keeping him up at night, lately. Both for her and for his Exalt, whom he hadn't spoken to privately since they'd exchanged their apologies. Every meeting between them involved either half a dozen knights or twice as many politicians. It was starting to wear on him, like the way the leather of ill-strapped armour chafed. He'd never gone so long without speaking to Emmeryn before, and he knew something weighed on her, with the recent pensive hood about her eyes.

He almost had the chance to ask, one morning, as Emmeryn had a small break between meetings. They walked to the corridor's windows together and watched the town below for a moment, exchanging the regular pleasantries, but before he could pry deeper she appeared.

If her hair in the setting sun's light was beatific, in the mid-morning sun it was blinding.

"Your handkerchief," he said, pulling it out of his pocket. "I washed it. Thank you."

"It was my pleasure to loan it to you, Sir Frederick." She took it from him and slipped it under her sleeve, against her delicate wrist. He felt a little jealous of it. She curtseyed very deeply to Emmeryn and asked about her health—light, lovely eyes widening a bit when her Emmeryn returned the question with genuine curiosity and even said her name. Emmeryn always remembered names. She gave a graceful answer, despite her surprise, before looking at Frederick again.

"Will I see you tonight?"

"It would be remiss of me to forget about my training. Her Grace must be protected at all costs."

"Of course." She smiled. It was formed beautifully, as she made all things. "Until then, Frederick."

As she left, he watched the bouncing of her ringlets, bedazzled. Emmeryn broke his thoughts with a chuckle and a "By the nose of Naga."

"You, of all people, should not speak the Goddess's name in vain!" he chided indignantly.

"You had a woman's handkerchief."

"Your Grace."

"In your pocket."

"Your Grace."

"Carried on your person like a token of favour, like you hoped to meet her by happenstance in a hallway."

"Emmeryn!" It came out less annoyed and more pleading.

"What's this blush for?"

Her voice was no longer teasing, and Frederick flushed harder when he couldn't answer her. He'd suddenly started to feel a hundred different things: guilt foremost, and humiliation second, and he couldn't understand why. There was nothing wrong with returning something borrowed. His shoulders must have tensed because Emmeryn put her hand on the left blade, rubbing a little circle against the bit of his shirt she could reach between armoured plates.

"She likes you a lot," she said softly. "Don't be nervous about a good thing like this."

"Good?"

"Good. I'm very happy for you."

His tumultuous feelings melded into a steady ache between his ribs, worsening with each breath he took because he knew she was sincere.

xXx

That evening Frederick came for tea. Emmeryn could tell by the line between his eyebrows that it was for a purpose, that something was worrying him, so she kept her eyes blank and her smile on.

"What news?" she asked as they sat on the sofas facing each other. Frederick pulled a face.

"I've been invited out into town. Just now, before I came here."

"A date? I told you so. When will it be?"

"Do not be silly. I'm not going."

"Why ever not?"

"I haven't the time for anything like that."

"Perhaps you should make the time. You're nearly twenty and you've never courted anyone." She was not condemning his past, merely curious. If he experienced attraction, what was stopping him? "Do you intend to remain a bachelor forever?"

"My heart lies with the realm." Even the clink of his teacup being set in his saucer had a finality to it.

"No wife, then. No children."

"No one to strike."

Her smile faded. Of course he'd already thought so far ahead. "You would never raise a hand to anyone."

"I've no idea what I would do. In light of recent events, I don't intend to find out if I am anything more like my father."

To Emmeryn that was too much, too sad. She had every confidence that Frederick could be brilliant with a family. He and Chrom were the brothers they each had never had, and to Lissa Frederick was more of a mother than Emmeryn or even their own mother. She looked into her cup, watched the tiny ripples made by the trembling of her hands.

Decisions, decisions.

"I order you to go," she said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Accept her invitation. At the very least, you can make a new friend. Enjoy someone's company. Have fun, for once, Frederick. Relax."

"I don't enjoy relaxing!"

"And that's a problem," she insisted. "You were so sick, recently. You wouldn't stop for even a moment, and you've hardly slowed still. If she can help you do that, I'll make it mandatory for you to spend time with her."

His jaw tightened and he merely stared at the tea table, so she gently added,

"You don't have to listen if you don't think it's best for you. I'm not ordering you as your Exalt. Just as Emmeryn."

He raised his eyes and gave her the strangest look, but before she could decipher it, he murmured, "I'll consider it."

They spoke about other things for a while, mostly Lissa and Maribelle's latest adventures and Chrom's new propensity for agreeing to fight (and easily beating) the first-year squires in spars. Finally Frederick leaned forward and asked what Emmeryn had been assuming:

"Has something been troubling you, lately?"

"Why do you ask?"

"You have been quiet at your meetings."

"Sometimes it's wiser to simply listen."

His eyebrow arched, probably without him meaning it to, but he didn't press further, and she appreciated it. She didn't quite have all her words in order, yet. It was better to keep her doubts to herself in the meantime.

When he left, she returned to her theology of marriage book. She was in the middle of her third read.

xXx

Frederick hadn't felt such a strange, nervous fluttering in his chest since he was knighted in front of all those people.

Town was bustling. It was a warm night. She looked gorgeous, the skin of her face flawless, her hair elaborately coiffed. He agreed to somewhere high-end for dinner, to suit a lady's tastes, although he was worried about it being too fancy because he could be rather picky. What if he couldn't finish the food on his plate? What if he wanted to but the quivering in his stomach didn't stop? What if he said something stupid?

Had he forgotten to put on a scent? Gods, he had. He'd already ruined everything. The night was done for.

She didn't seem to mind. She was smiling when they were seated at their table. He was too nervous to talk much but she seemed perfectly composed, and plunged into what promised to be a very witty story. He couldn't keep his mind on it.

Had anyone double-checked Chrom's wrist? He'd twisted it a little at practice that morning. If something in those delicate bones had gotten inflamed, it'd be worse these hours later. Frederick should have thought of that before he left.

"Frederick?"

"Yes?"

She suddenly looked a little self-conscious. "Perhaps I'm...dragging the story on a bit?"

"No, certainly not. It's riveting."

She continued and he concentrated. He could only manage it for a moment before the place setting began to bother him. He smoothed out a wrinkle in the tablecloth, adjusted his fork and knife to a more exact parallel.

What if whoever brushed Lissa's hair wasn't being gentle enough? Did they know to put pressure on her scalp so the tangles would not pull as badly?

Had anyone fetched her stuffed bear from the garden, or was it still abandoned there? Did anyone remember she'd taken it outside with her? What if she needed it to sleep and no one could find it in the castle? What if only Frederick knew its whereabouts?

"Frederick? Are you listening?" She was staring at him. She looked a compelling mixture of confused and irked, and his stomach lurched.

"Yes, of course. Please continue."

A pause, a scrutinizing look, and she went on with her story. Frederick tried anew to follow the threads of it. It did sound very interesting, but he couldn't piece the plot together and didn't recognize any of the names she mentioned. And no matter how entertaining it truly was, his worries kept coming, churning up like water through a mill wheel.

Emmeryn. What about Emmeryn? Phila could be trusted with her, surely. But were two heads not better than one?

Was she all alone in her room, still worried about whatever she'd refused to tell him? How could he call himself her protector, let alone her friend, if he went off to relax while she was so obviously distressed? His fidgeting increased. He straightened his cuffs, adjusted his plate, reset his fork and knife again. His companion's weren't even either. He'd reached across the table to fix it when he realized she wasn't speaking. The silence rang in his ears. She hadn't been speaking for a long time. Bashfully, he raised his eyes to find her simply watching him with her beautiful eyes.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

The various answers jumbled in his chest, pushed up by the updrafts of the butterflies in his stomach: I don't know. Anything. Everything. Me and you, here like this. How much I want to kiss you. How hard I want to do it. Chrom's wrist, Falchion. Emmeryn's blank eyes. The angle of your fork. That wrinkle in your dress.

"I have to go," he said instead.

"What?"

He was already pushing himself up from the table, his heart beating so fast it was like he'd run ten laps around the castle.

"Frederick, what's the matter? Please explain!"

"Lady Lissa's bear!"

He fled. By the time he made it outside he could scarcely breathe, but he kept running, hardly aware of the path he was taking, only keeping the castle in sight. At one point he had to stumble into an alleyway, too breathless to keep going, trying to press himself into the brick wall. His hand fisted in the front of his shirt but it didn't relieve the suffocation. It took a long time to slow his breathing enough to catch it again.

By the time he was back inside the castle he felt terrible, like he was falling ill again. Miserable and humiliated. Lissa was tucked in bed with her bear. Chrom's wrist was unsplinted and comfortably bent as he dozed with a hand under his face. The light jilting of his stomach was long gone and it all felt weighted down like lead. Emmeryn's room was the only stop left.

xXx

Emmeryn was in bed, reading, when he barged in. She was so startled she nearly dropped the heavy book. She'd made it clear to the guards outside that anyone they were familiar with was permitted to enter her rooms without knocking at any hour, for she could simply lock her bedchamber door if she was changing, but no one ever did come in without knocking, outside of Chrom and Lissa. He left the door cracked open behind him but came all the same.

Frederick was a wreck. He was flushed and trembling, and his white shirt was rumpled and had red-brown dust smudged into it. She sat up straight at once, book in her lap, and held out her arms.

"What happened? She looked like such a nice girl!"

"Too nice." Frederick sat on the edge of her bed, but too far to touch unless she stretched her legs out under her blankets and kicked him. "I don't know what happened. I panicked."

"Panicked? About what?"

"About...all of you. Whether Lissa had been settled for bed properly. If I hurt Chrom sparring this morning. Whatever it is that you've been anxious about. If you were safe."

"Frederick," she said, now quite worried, "of course I'm safe. I have all the other Guards. Phila."

"I know. I just...couldn't stop worrying. I couldn't think straight, couldn't breathe. We were having dinner one moment and then I was up and running the next."

"You've never told me this happens to you."

"It doesn't. Several times while I was a child, perhaps, but never after I was knighted. Never. I'd beaten it."

Though Emmeryn had taken away the royal part of her royal decree, making it ultimately Frederick's decision to go out for the night, she now felt guilty.

"You were just nervous. It's all right. You can explain everything to her tomorrow."

"If she ever wants to speak to me again. I feel like a fool."

"I'm sure she'll understand." Emmeryn went back to her book, letting Frederick sit there a while with his head in his hands. When he finally looked up, he noted,

"You've been reading that one for a long time."

"It's interesting." She flicked to a new page.

"It's growing late. I'm sorry to have intruded. Will you sleep soon?"

"If you will." She gave him a sympathetic smile. "You look exhausted."

"I strive to emulate you in every way, milady."

This time she stretched her left foot out and nudged his leg. "That isn't very nice."

"Neither is kicking me."

"That wasn't a kick. This is a kick."

She was going to do it gently, but before she could even try Frederick's hand clamped around her ankle, blankets and all, and pinned her to the mattress.

For a moment she looked at him. She really looked. He was only focused on the ill-defined lump of her other leg, perhaps expecting a new attack. His hand's warmth was already bleeding through the blanket.

Nothing.

And nothing in his eyes, either. She wasn't sure if it hurt more or if it was more of a relief. He was so innocent. It was absurd for a soldier his age to be so innocent.

"I love you," she said. He smiled at her coverlet.

"And I, you."

"You will go out again tomorrow?"

"If she'll have me."

"That's the spirit."

xXx

"The spirit" did not serve Frederick very well.

He tried. She was very receptive at first, understanding, even. Laid a soft hand against his arm while he disclosed his worries, though his words were brief and his tone cool, more like he was delivering a status report than sharing anything about himself. They went out twice more. The second time he remembered he hadn't triple-checked the latches on Chrom's bedroom windows and abandoned her at the table again. The third time there was a stain on the tablecloth and he nearly knocked her glass over while trying to lift it out.

"Frederick," she'd said with a sigh, "I do like you very much, but I don't think this is right after all. Can I come speak with you as a friend, in the evenings, from now on? Just a friend?"

"Milady," he muttered with the ache back between his ribs, caked with guilt and shame and relief, "I would be delighted."

There were a few others, after her. She apparently hadn't spoken ill of him since that third night in town, and the attention on him was not diminished. Frederick tried to be dedicated, focused, worthy of courtship, husband material from the very first moment. The string of women broke things off with him after a single night, one by one, after too much knee-bouncing or twitching or plate-polishing or straightening or diverting the conversation back to the Royal Family.

The invitations slowed to a trickle. He began to hear whispers of the word "fanatical" when he passed.

A few weeks later he was back on the edge of Emmeryn's bed with her, having snuck in while he was on guard duty. The momentary unease was pushed away by the thought that she would be just as safe with him at her side as she'd be with him outside the door.

"Perhaps I should try to change," he said. "I know even you and Chrom and Lissa think I fuss too often. Perhaps if I was not always so-"

"Don't change anything," Emmeryn said. Softly, but it was an order, not a request. "You will not be happy being anyone but yourself."

He was useless, though. He still flushed to think of all the time he'd wasted. All the people he'd treated so terribly. He needed his own life, self-agency, but nothing was more important than the Royal Family. Than Chrom's safety, Lissa's happiness. Than his fair, fragile Exalt. Where was the balance? Emmeryn broke his thoughts by taking his hand.

"I'm too much," he said. "Too Frederick."

"You're not 'too' anything. You must find someone who appreciates you the way you are. That's all."

"You say it like it's an easy thing, when I'm beginning to believe it's impossible."

"I like you the way you are."

He ducked his head in guilt. "Yes. Forgive me, Your Grace."

"There's nothing to forgive. Everyone needs to be reminded, sometimes, even by their closest friends."

"I am so lucky to have you, Emmeryn."

"And I, you. I think I would be very lonely without you and Phila."

He withdrew his hand and hesitated. She waited. He finally said, "Perhaps I should just pause for a while. I doubt Naga would condone all of this."

"Condone all of what?"

"Me agreeing to try out woman after woman after woman. Relationships are to be taken very seriously. This is how marriages begin. To simply agree to spend the time with them, without proper consideration, without the deliberation and enough passage of time to ensure that what may be growing in our hearts will not easily fade-"

"Frederick." It was difficult not to roll her eyes, though he was being earnest. "It is not at all wrong to accept multiple invitations to dinner. It does not contractually bind you to being someone's lover."

"I might be in better grace with Our Lady if it did." Now he was blushing.

"I don't understand."

"A lover has...consent to feel a certain way. What if you are not anyone's lover? What if you feel desire for someone when you shouldn't?"

"When you shouldn't?" Her heart started to hammer.

"Toward someone you don't love. I...the first...I had such thoughts about her." He looked miserably ashamed, for the brief second she could see before he stood and walked to the window, hands clasped behind his back. She let him go. He liked to pace. "But I never loved her. Is that not wrong of me? Disloyal?"

Disloyal to whom? She was afraid to ask. Instead she assured,

"It's not wrong in the slightest. It's perfectly normal."

"It's said to be a sin."

"Only when it manifests as an unwanted action." She reached over for her theology book and nestled it in her lap. "The testaments are very clear about that."

"I still hate it. I don't want it to be this way. I am not so naïve as to believe that love and lust always go hand-in-hand, but...I'd hoped that for me, they would. It's so much simpler."

"Sometimes we don't turn out the way we'd hoped," Emmeryn said softly. "We turn out the way Naga made us. Whatever that may mean."

"Aha. Are you going to tell me what's bothering you, yet?"

"Opportunist," she accused as she slumped back onto her bed. There was a comfortable whuff. She had to take a few breaths before she could begin. "I have been thinking about courting quite a lot."

"Your meddling in my personal life has made that quite clear."

"For myself," she clarified. "It...has become very important. Nearly mandatory. I'll have to find a husband soon. I'm the Exalt, of course. I need support. Political leverage. Heirs."

"So that's why you've been reading so carefully."

Emmeryn sat up and looked at the embossed cover for a while. A Treatise on This the Most Holy Sacrament, Exalt Calistus IV.

"It isn't just the theology of marriage," she said. "It also includes the entire theology of intimacy."

As always, she didn't blush, but Frederick's returned at the tips of his ears even though his back was to her.

"A marriage is supposed to be for love," she said. "But mine must be political. Is a love of my people enough to keep it pure and sacred, if I cannot love my husband? What if I cannot even like him? What if he's anything like that Feroxi Khan, or the last Plegian king, or my father?" She was trembling now but it was too late to stop. "Am I expected to fall for him, and damned if I do not? And I—I must—there are steps I must take to have an heir. I do not know if I can take them."

Frederick turned to watch her, concern in the angle of his brows, so she dropped her gaze back to her lap and the book. She was strong. Strong for him and for all of them. She had to remain so. When she spoke again her voice was steady.

"Our desire is the appetite Naga gave us in order to bring children into the world. It's a good and holy thing. But to engage in the act forcefully, or manipulatively, or with no appetite...that is truly wrong. And I have no appetite. I've been trying but I can't imagine anything desirable at all about anyone. So what am I to do? Is it all right to lie with my husband even if I don't want to, so long as I make the decision willingly, or is that as bad as him forcing himself upon me, or me eating when I am not hungry? If it is something meant to show love, do I corrupt such a thing by performing out of duty alone? And if it is the ultimate expression of romantic love, am I not good at loving if I do not wish to do it?"

"Emmeryn," was all he said, and she could tell it was all he knew to say.

"The book does not have an answer. There is no mention of people like me. All it does is go on for a long time about how coupling before marriage is wrong, even if love is present. I wonder how that could be fair, quite honestly. Are you and I to be judged on the same scale, when you were made to feel desire and I was not?" She finally caught his eye and couldn't help but laugh at the irony. "All your worries about sinning, and here I am with an easier situation than anyone. Why, I'm practically a saint. Canonize me."

Frederick was silent for a long while, just thinking. Finally he sighed, walked back to her, took the book out of her lap, and set it with a firm thump back on the table.

"Let us read a different book," he said. "Just for a little while. Lie back?"

Emmeryn listened, scooting under the blanket and propping herself up on her pillows while she watched him go to her bookshelf and scan titles.

"Does a courtly romance sound amusing, milady?"

"Too stuffy, I think. Is there something with pirates?"

He selected a spine. She let him read until his voice got husky, and then hoarse, and before she could tell him to stop she'd fallen asleep.


Notes:

1. Sorry for the delay. This chapter has been up on Archive Of Our Own for an entire month, but just wouldn't work with me. It all feels kind of rushed and meh, still, but the next chapter is almost ready so I might as well FINALLY post this one while I can.

2. I struggled a long time with headcanons for past!Fred, because I think he's so monogamous. Like he wouldn't kiss a person until he was sure he was also going to ask to marry them later. It'd mess with his OCD too much otherwise. Still, in his supports, even though he's not romantic, he does seem VERY observant to and unsurprised with confessions and dating, usually predicting his future wife's feelings before she can confess them (not like Captain Chromblivious, and not like a lot of the guys who go out on a limb to propose and feel relieved surprise when their gals say yes. He's SUPER bold with Maribelle, of all people. This is also why Cordelia totally throws him for a loop. She drops hints and HE NOTICES VERY QUICKLY, even though they ended up being about a different guy.) So basically after pestering a friend for a while we decided that he'd have to be wise in the ways of women, but without ever entering a serious relationship or ever needing to commit himself, because with Emmeryn as his idol he just couldn't do it. And even that would be difficult for him, because he takes everything so seriously and commits so much to everything he has a hand in, soooo Emmeryn herself had to meddle a bit. It all feels a little weird and OOC but I have no better explanation for why a nutjob like Frederick understands the laydeez.

3. Everything is medieval europe and Emmeryn wears an Eastern Orthodox phelonion shhhhh let me just convert their religion into catholicism so I don't have to try and be creative with something new.

4. And when you can't get together you gotta hurry up and pressure them to find someone else and be happy without you so you can at least take heart in that amiright.