Title: Kanpai
Fandom: Fire Emblem 7
Pairing/Characters: Eliwood, Hector, Lyn
Warning(s): None
Genre: Gen
Eliwood drank light wine and Hector drank heavy beer, another simple fact that brought to light the startling contrast between the two noblemen with all its ramifications. After all, wine is partaken at fancy dinners with salads and dainty sauces; beer is slugged in taverns with meat and more meat. Wine puts the 'noble' in 'nobleman', and beer provides the 'man'. And yet, despite this, they seemed to tolerate one another rather well – Eliwood understanding Hector's penchant for rudeness, Hector putting up with Eliwood's delicacy and occasional forays into the quasi-feminine – enough, at least, to lead an army together.
But Lyn (who, for the record, drank wine while playing the noblewoman and Sacaean whiskey at all other times) had spent enough of her life on the plains to see through their differences to the heart of the matter: neither could lead an army alone. When Hector was rash, Eliwood thought things through. When Eliwood was melancholy, Hector could jump in axe-first. And she…well, when the two of them were off with Mark drawing up maps and charts and strategies, she was female enough to remind them of the women and children involved.
So maybe she, with her flask of whiskey at her hip and her hard-edged kindness, was lost somewhere in the sameness and difference as well; Eliwood was noble, Hector was rash, Lyndis was – free. Free like the tribesmen in her homeland, aging grain in homemade barrels, sharing a glass with brothers and sisters in the morning to keep themselves warm –
"An' then," Hector said, his cheeks dark red, drunk on victory and Ilian rum, "She says 'Hec'tr, when I f'rst – f'rst met you – you – Lyn! I'm tellin' a story 'bout your purple friend here!"
– Or maybe she was reading too much into the whole thing. She picked up her glass, and toasted with Eliwood to life.