Severa's Tale: Act II

Section B

A Funeral of Flowers

Finale

Author's note: I recommend listening to Full Fathom Five from Final Fantasy XIV when you see one * mark, and Run Away, Fugitives from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX when you see two ** marks.


A wince was drawn as Validar's face while Severa's door made a loud, creaking noise as he opened it. One last precaution had to be made before his incursion, and everything was accounted for. Severa was in her bed, as was Lucina, and neither was awake. Good. No objections could be made to what he was about to do.

He muttered a quick prayer to whatever god was foolish enough to listen to him as he closed the door. Turns out one of them was listening, as nary a peep sounded from the door. His gaze transfixed on the hallway leading to the passenger cars and he began to shuffle towards it. After spending so many days on this train, he had gotten to understand the routines of the Shepherds. Kellam was always the first to hit the hay, followed by the others save for a few exceptions.

One of those exceptions was sitting in her spot and was in the process of looking up from her book to stare at Validar. The passenger car they were in was empty.

"What do you want?" Tharja groaned. Normally, her eyes would be full of malice towards him instead of annoyance. An improvement for sure.

"Greetings, uh, Tharja." Validar's pace slowed. He knew from work experience that the quiet ones were always the scariest. "If you don't mind, there's something I need your help with."

"I'm not doing your shift of the dishes." She went back to reading her book; not even thirty seconds into a conversation and she was bored already.

"No, it's not that. It's about my magic." His hands were interlocked before him.

"Ask Miriel. She has nothing better to do anyway." It amazed Validar that somehow every word this woman said was dismissive.

"Miriel doesn't have access to the dark magic that you possess." Validar blurted out, wishing he would have reworded that but unsure how to.

"How do you know tha-" It occurred to Tharja that she was speaking to the former head of her old religion. "...Fine. What hex do you need cast?"

"I have no need for a hex. I need your magic." At the very least he was making progress.

"It's not for sale."

"Oh, no no no. I just need to… borrow it." His next words would have to be chosen very carefully. "Not as in taking it from your body, oh no. I need you to… uh… Channel it through my body. Like water through a sewage system." Before he could even stop himself from comparing himself to a sewer, the words trickled out his lips while his brain scrambled to censor himself. "I'm sorry, that was very crude and-"

Tharja let out a slight laugh, a sound Validar had never heard her make in however many years she had spent on this train.

"Gods, you really hate yourself, huh?" Her eyebrow was raised as she put her book at her side. "It's quite hilarious." Validar was taken aback by this but did not want to anger her.

"Y-yes I uh, it uh…" He stopped and just bit his tongue. "Are you willing to help?"

"Fine. You need me to channel my magic through your body, right?" Tharja stood up and began to walk towards Validar. He almost backed away out of fear,

"Correct. If I could teach you the spell in less than ten years, I would. So just take my hands like thi-" He barely finished his sentence before Tharja grabbed his hands and refused to let go, no matter how much he squirmed.

She closed her eyes as dark, smokey lines flowed from her arms to his hands. A familiar, powerful sensation flowed through his veins. Too powerful. He could feel his eyes watering as this awful sensation overtook him again. He squeaked out the incantation, desperate for the sensation to stop right this instead.

The orange gate he had used so many times before now appeared before him and Tharja. She drew back, seeming none the worse for wear. Validar, however, fell to his knees and buckled to the floor, panting for breath.

"Hey. You alright?" Tharja asked as she walked up to him and nudged his head with her foot.

"Yes." He spoke face-down into the carpet. But as he laid there, he felt something brush past his head and ruffle his hair. Something cold and damp. He pulled his head up and saw water rush out of the bottom section of the portal. "But, that would mean…"

*With a burst of speed and determination that Tharja rarely saw, Validar got to his feet and rushed through the portal. She followed behind, stepping into the dimly-lit library that Validar held some dinners in. Freezing water reached her thighs and made her glad she died wearing a shirt and pants and not her latex uniform. The magic gate closed behind her, causing more water to be displaced and splashed her back, sending a chill down her spine.

She scanned the library, wondering where this water was coming from. Her answer lied on the ceiling, as water rushed through open holes in the roof. This meant some of the shelves were not safe, already drenched by the tide. The rest were about to be swallowed by the rising water.

Validar was already in the process of trying to grab as many books off the closest shelf as he could, only to notice the table he threw them on was now underneath the surface of the water. He quickly grabbed a soggy tome and pried it open; the ink on its pages was smudged and barely legible. A wail escaped his lips as the drenched pages were ripped out of the tome as he tried to flip them.

"What was in those tomes?" Tharja asked, wondering if she should help or not.

"It was the…" He could barely speak a coherent sentence without sobbing. "Forty years worth of information about my late wife, and now they're all lost."

Tharja took another gaze around the flooded library. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a flying tome that used its wings to flap like a bird. An injured bird that could barely stay afloat, and was on a flight path directly through a column of water. Validar followed her gaze once he realized she was wincing. "No!"

With an outstretched hand, he watched as the tome flew through the water and dive-bombed out the other side. Its collision was obscured by some bookshelves, but Validar swore he saw some soggy pages explode out of its cover and into his view. "Where are my caretakers?"

"Those shadowy bodies of yourself?" Tharja remembered them from the feast. No answer was given, but Tharja assumed it was the case. Validar was more preoccupied with trying to find his helpers. He continued to wade through the water, past more and more ruined shelves. Tharja followed and was met with an entrance to a back room. A broken window of stained glass hung above the door; glass that depicted the Grimleal brand was shattered from the glass and floated past on the water. In fact, more water rushed out of the hole in the stained glass window.

Tharja grabbed the glass and made sure to not cut her hand on it, then plugged her nose with her other hand as she followed Validar through the waterfall to get to the door on the other side. Her hair ran down and obscured her eyes; she used the shard of glass as a mirror to fix her hair.

Validar looked around the circular meeting room. Nine empty seats were in here, and along with the water as well. He fell to his knees and began to mumble something.

"Where does this damned tide come from? Was this a failsafe if I broke the grip the Grimleal had over me? Is it my own hatred taken form? I don't…"

"Why did you need those tomes?" Tharja asked while she leaned against a nearby wall and folded her arms.

"It was for my painting. My sweet, beautiful painting of my family." He held his trembling hands up. "Severa told me I could never go back to being the old me from forty years ago, but she's wrong. She doesn't know the spells I have locked away in my brain. With that painting, I can restore my old life. I needed as many details as I could to finish it. As many details as I could use from the corpse of my old life, but there's nothing left…"

"You said your memories have returned to you, right?"

"Well, yes but-"

"Then why not use them to finish the painting?" Validar paused after Tharja spoke. "You were already using them to write down details, but now you have no restrictions."

"I don't remember everything about her, though. I had forty years worth of information and now I'll have to start from scratch."

Tharja opened her mouth to speak, wanting to tell him to stop being so beholden to his past mistakes and simply forge a new path with his experiences of two lifetimes, but she could not. She simply bit her tongue and followed him through a sealed door.

This last room seemed to be the best-preserved out of all of them; the water had barely reached here, and even if it did there was hardly anything to ruin. Save for a painting of a woman with white hair at the beach. A small child with white hair who looked like Robin was in the corner of the painting. Some details were still left as the white of the canvas underneath it, such as the color of her eyes. "Here they are… My incomplete canvas."

"What will you use this painting for?" Tharja asked as Validar motioned for her to grab the other edge of the frame and carry it off the wall.

"There's an old Grimleal incantation we use to practice important battles. With a painting or tome as the foundation, we can create a magical reality depicting a repeating day." He grabbed the other edge of the painting and they carried it off the wall. "We won that day at the Dragon's Table because we practiced hundreds of times until we found a strategy that worked against you and your companions. There are stories about those who use this magic to live in the reality they make, free from their problems."

"You want to do just that." Tharja could tell where this was going while they set the painting on a table.

"Yes. Nobody would miss me. The world would be a better place if I wasn't in it." Validar bowed his head and sighed. "But enough about my sad story. We need to get this back to my office." He outstretched his hands, signaling for Tharja to channel magic into him once again. She obliged, they performed the rite, and Validar didn't tumble to the ground this time as the portal appeared.

They carried the portrait through the gate and into Validar's office, where the portal disappeared behind them. "I have no desire to go back to that accursed place. I have all the materials I need right here." He walked over to a nearby closet, revealing multiple canvases and an array of painting supplies. "Thank you for helping tonight. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Teach me that spell to make an artificial reality." Tharja blurted out. "Multiple people can visit the same one, correct?"

"I believe so, but this is an unusual request." Validar handed her a canvas and stood aside as she selected some paint and brushes.

"I shall return in a few days with something I wish to show you." And with that, she walked out of the room.

"Al-alright! Thanks again for the help!" He called out in a low voice then grabbed some paint from the cabinet and sat at his desk, staring at the painting and waiting for a memory to give him something to fill in the blanks of this canvas.


A few days passed. Lucina and Severa were still relaxing before they went back home, and the train was currently stopped at Father's Pride as part of its south-bound voyage through Valm. The scenery outside was rather delightful, with lots of greenery and lush vegetation. But it did little to make Validar feel better as he stared out the window, waiting for inspiration to strike.

A knock sounded on his door. Probably Severa or one of the Shepherds checking in on him. He prepared a phony response, a dash of 'I'm fine' with some sprinkles of 'I just had a rough night, nothing major' with some 'thanks for checking in' added in for good measure.

"Come in." He spoke as he opened the door. Tharja stood in his doorway and was carrying a canvas covered with cloth. She entered without saying a word and noticed that his painting was just as incomplete as it was a few days ago. She let out a sigh as she put her painting on his desk, next to his incomplete one.

"It's finished. Teach me the spell so I can show you my work." She pulled the cloth off the canvas, revealing a rather abstract depiction of a brown-haired girl being dragged away by a light blue pair of hands. A halo was at the top of her head, contrasting the fires in the background.

"Um…" Validar was still studying the portrait and absorbing how chaotic all the strokes were when Tharja grabbed his arm. "R-right, you need the spell…" He closed his eyes and prepared to transfer the incantation. She grabbed his hands and shut her eyes as well, feeling the words from his mind enter hers through their magical link. "We are lucky that this incantation can be shared, unlike the one that opened the portal to the library.

With the spell transferred to Tharja, she wasted no time in putting her hand on the dried painting and closing her eyes while she mumbled. She passed out on the desk, and Validar quickly followed her by placing his hand on the opposite side and falling asleep.

**When he awoke, he found himself in a small house next to a fireplace. Tharja sat in a chair near him and was reading a book. She was no longer a translucent ghost and looked about eight years younger. A door opened, judging by the sound behind Validar, and a small girl with brown hair ran in and to her mother.

"Mommy! Mommy mommy mommy mommy mommmmyyyyyy!" She called out, tugging on her leg while Tharja was still reading, only looking up after a few seconds passed.

"Yes, Noire?" She asked, holding out her arms as her daughter climbed up to her lap.

"Those bullies at school were making fun of me, saying you casted hexes on me. But I read out that powerful curse you gave me and they left me alone!" Noire snuggled into her mother's embrace while Tharja hugged her.

"That's nice, dear." She waited for a few moments before speaking again. "Stahl? Is dinner ready?" She looked towards a room that was too fuzzy to make out. A voice sounded; it was as muffled as the room it came from.

The scene around him changed, growing fuzzier until it transformed into the same house, only with more dust on the furniture and flooring. Tharja was still in her chair, reading an envelope with a black seal on it. Her hands were trembling as she put the note on the end table. Noire's wailing could be heard from upstairs. Validar walked over and inspected the letter, only able to read a few words of it:

"But when we tried to make a retreat, the risen were too fast. Stahl sacrificed himself to hold the line. We're sorry. We will be here for you if you need anything." The letter was signed by Lon'qu. Thunder flashed in the nearby window, casting a dim shadow over Validar. He turned around to see the source of the shadow was the ghostly Tharja he knew, watching the scene and the younger, alive version of herself. Her arms were crossed.

The scene changed again. Tharja was still in her chair. An older Noire arrived through the front door and didn't say a word to her mother as she went upstairs. Tharja said nothing in return. The real Tharja continued to watch until now, when she began to avert her eyes as the scene changed.

Validar and the real Tharja were now in a different room. Noire was tied down to a table and squirming. The other Tharja loomed over her and had a tome in her hand.

"If you weren't so useless, I would've found a way to bring your father back by now. Stop squirming." Her tone was harsh, cold and uncaring. The exact opposite of how she sounded when Noire was a child.

"M-m-m-mother please, my skin feels like it's burning…" Noire let out a whimper. Validar turned to the real Tharja and noticed she was covering her eyes with her hands. Validar could only continue watching, his eyes were transfixed yet his mouth could not formulate any of the thoughts swirling in his mind.

"Good. It means the hex is working." Tharja replied. Noire let out another wail. Another change of scenery occurred, now depicting Tharja at a desk full of tomes and scribbled diagrams. Her hands were trembling and the diagram at her desk was stained with tears.

She stood up and muttered a spell, summoning a strange, gaseous cloud of blue light. A similar color to the blue that made up the real Tharja's body. The fake Tharja waved her hands and molded it into a human-like image, resembling her late husband. "Listen to me. You are to do what I cannot. When I begin experimenting on Noire tonight, you need to overpower me and free her. Take her to Lissa's house before you fade. They'll take better care of her than I ever will."

"Understood." The spirit spoke in a groggy voice before fading out. Tharja returned to her desk, her entire body trembling for what felt like an age. Suddenly, she knocked the stack of tomes over and let out a scream.

For what Validar hoped was the last time, the scene changed. Returning to the table from before, Noire was again tied to it and Tharja looked to be about the same age as the real one watching from afar. She began muttering incantations, only for the blue cloud to return and assume its appearance as Stahl. It rushed Tharja, knocking her to the ground and untying Noire. "Sweetie, run!" The ghost yelled as Noire got to her feet, eyes stained with tears.

"Daddy?" Noire asked.

"Yes, it's me! Run to Lissa's! I'll hold your mother back!" Tharja feigned a struggle underneath the ghost, watching as Noire ran out of the room. The front door was opened and then slammed shut. As the ghost disappeared, Tharja got to her feet and went back to her chair.

For one last time, the scene was changed. Tharja was back in her chair and figures were at her windows, clawing and moaning to get in. The front door was kicked open. Risen burst into her house and around her, but she didn't have a care in the world.

"Do your worst. Deliver your judgment to this criminal." She muttered right before the risen swarmed her.

Validar and Tharja both awoke with a gasp in Validar's office, locking eyes and noticing they were both crying.

"Oh, gods… That was all real, wasn't it?" Validar asked as he dried his eyes. Tharja said nothing as she fell to the ground and covered her eyes.

"I… never had the strength to save her myself… Or to tell anyone about that, Stahl most of all..." She continued to sob. Validar grabbed a blanket from his closet and wrapped it around her. His mind was already racing, comparing her experiences to his own. He then went back to the painting she drew, studying it further.

On closer inspection, those fires in the background depicted crude scenes that lined up with what Validar saw. A figure and a smaller one on a chair, a single figure on a chair, the smaller figure on a table. These four diagrams continued on in an endless loop in the background behind the drawing of Noire being saved by her 'father.'

"Do you know why I wanted to show you this?" Tharja asked, blanket wrapped around her. "Because we're both awful parents. You weren't there for your son, and I was there for my daughter in all the wrong ways."

Validar said nothing as he bowed his head, trying to find some retort to make himself look worse. But he found nothing. Instead, he began to talk.

"I remember, the day he came into this world. That hallway in the clergy seemed to stretch on and on… And when I came into the room, I found Singi holding him. I'll never forget the look on both of their faces. Her eyes were so beautiful in their purple glor-" He paused, glancing at the whites of Singi's eyes in the painting. He quickly grabbed some purple paint and filled in the blank spots, and even more blank spots. Back and forth, he went, grabbing more and more paint with each trip until many blank spots on his painting had been colored in.

Tharja was now standing behind him and noticed that half of his painting was colored in. "How does it look?" Validar smiled as he turned around and asked.

"It looks wonderful." Tharja smiled in turn, something Validar was not expecting. "Now you see why I showed you those painful memories. You had written down everything about your wife and son and it paralyzed you with a choice. But you and I both have an awful past, and we don't have to be tied down by it. We can pick and choose the good memories to color in, and deal with the awful ones when the time is right. When Severa and Lucina bring Noire here, I'm going to show her this painting and explain to her what happened. And I'm going to apologize."

"I see." Validar leaned back in his chair while Tharja went for the door. "Thank you for this talk."

"Glad to be of help." Tharja gave another smile as she shut the door. The sun began to dim outside, but that did little to stop Validar from painting.


"We'll bring everyone here as soon as we can," Severa told the crowd of Shepherds and Validar. She and Lucina had gathered everyone here before they departed. The windows outside depicted the tranquility underneath the sea. "Grandpa, can you keep the train in the Ylissean Castle when it reaches there?"

"We're going to have to anyway. Without that refueling station in the desert, the train can't make another return voyage." Validar replied.

"Okay then," Lucina spoke up, taking one last look at the crowd with a smile. "It was wonderful to see you all again."

"We're so proud of you two!" The crowd yelled back with another smile. Severa and Lucina took hold of the warp staff while the crowd waved. They began to think of the square of New Ylisstol, which made the staff hum with arcane energy. With a bright flash of light, the staff crumbled to dust and they were gone from the train.

Severa opened her eyes as she heard panic and commotion all around her. Lucina was right next to her, but Laurent was standing before them in the central square of New Ylisstol and ordering troops. They at least made the trip unscathed, but they were now wondering just what the hell had happened.

"Severa? Lucina? How did you two get here?" Laurent turned to them with a shocked expression.

"We can explain later. What's going on? Where's Inigo?" Lucina asked, noticing that the troops and townspeople had stopped to stare at them.

"We don't know where Inigo is, and we have more pressing issues at hand," Laurent replied, pointing behind them to the headquarters building. "Follow me." They obliged and entered the building, only to find the central room looked like it had been torn apart and the display for the Fire Emblem was empty.

"What the hell happened to the Fire Emblem?" Severa asked, noticing other rooms looked even more disorganized.

"Morgan stole it and fled to Ylisstol." Noire stepped into the scene from another room.

"What?" Lucina and Severa replied in perfect unison.


Extended author's note, again:

Hey there. It's been a really, really long while, hasn't it? Five months and one day to be specific. Sorry about the very long wait for this batch. I had to take a lot of time polishing each of these chapters, dealing with my first year of college, realizing I am very bad when it comes to procrastinating writing for this story, etc.

Let me just say I am so glad that this section is finally done. I never thought most of the time this story was online (so far) would be spent on this section (again, so far), but I promise it wasn't for nothing. I have most of the entire story planned out now, where I want to go, what I want to tell, what wonderful music I want to use, and I'm so excited to show you all of it. I'm not sure what view count counts as normal for an Awakening fic in 2020, but I appreciate the hell out of whoever gives me a view. Thank you for listening to me ramble on and take Awakening in a direction that it absolutely did not need to go in. But that's half the fun of it, isn't it?

The next section of Severa's Act 2: Puppets Don't Cry, will be uploaded in three chunks. But I couldn't leave with just vague words, so I have a little something special waiting for you fine folks in the next chapter.