2. Mother (I)
Morgan visited the castle less often than Lucina because he spent all his time looking for their mother the queen, who everybody else said had died in the war. At first he was with their cousin Owain, but then Owain went to live somewhere in the east, and Morgan continued on his own. Whenever Father's friends or people in the castle asked about him, nobody seemed to know for sure where he was: they only had half-ideas that he'd been in Plegia, or in the mountains, or across the sea at some point. Nina's nurse said that she didn't even think Morgan was really looking anymore, that the boy just had wanderlust; but the least he could do was send more letters back to the Exalt who already had so much of his family dead, which by the way is why you're so important to him, princess, you and Lucina.
Nobody was supposed to say that the queen was dead in front of her father. They were supposed to talk as though she had gone missing. Nina knew that her father believed it, because every couple of months, he went away from the castle for about a week with the captain and a few knights, and people would whisper in the meanwhile that he had gone to search in the south.
Her father and brother and Aunt Lissa all talked as though her mother could still be alive, but Lucina didn't, so Nina didn't know what to think. She didn't have any memories of her mother, so she missed her less than she missed her father when he went away for a week and came back somber without any stories or gifts.
But then Morgan came back to the castle for the first time since before Nina's birthday, and before the day was over she was in a carriage with her brother and father, with those knights who went with Father to the south surrounding them on horseback, to go meet her mother who had been found near the desert.
They were going to travel through the night. Nina had never rode a carriage this long before. She was nervous, because her father and brother were sitting on the seat out front and her nurse hadn't come. There was only one of the lady guards from the castle with her. Nurse hadn't wanted to be in a carriage for this long, either.
Eventually Nina fell asleep on the cushioned seat. When she woke up, she was told that they were in Plegia, a place to the west which was also ruled by her father, but was somehow still a different country. Outside, the ground was yellow and dry, like the dirt paths in the castle garden. Nina stuck her arm out through the curtain. The sun was hot like summer. Her father sent a couple of the knights ahead, and soon after they came to a small city, called a village, where the houses were also yellow and dry.
The knights who had gone ahead were here, on foot, and though they didn't say anything all the people in the street saw them and moved aside. Morgan and Father got off the carriage seat and walked in front. Nina stayed in the carriage, looking out at the yellow village and the people in plain dull clothes who watched them go by, and some of the people who caught her eyes stared back at her like they were uncomfortable. Nina was old enough to know that this wasn't a time when she was supposed to wave.
Morgan said something to Father, and they all stopped in a shady spot beneath one of the taller houses. Then Morgan and Father went off alone all the way down the one big street to a house with a sign over it, and Nina could only watch by straining her neck out of the window. First Morgan went in by himself. Then, after minutes, Father went inside also. Even though he was far away, Nina thought he moved like he was nervous.
After an even longer while, Father came back to get her.
"Nina," he said. His voice was gentle as though he was trying very hard to keep it that way. "Your mother and brother are in that house." He looked directly at her. "Your mother is having trouble remembering certain things, and she might not recognize you. I'm going to need you to be kind to her, and to help her remember." He held out his hand. "All right?"
Father led her by hand down the big street, until they reached the little house with the sign over it. Inside it was cool and dim. The house had a small room with a bigger room behind it. The woman who was her mother sat in the big room behind a long table covered with bottles and bowls and books. She neither moved nor spoke when Nina came in. Morgan was kneeling below one of the high-up windows next to a little boy, maybe a couple of years younger than Nina, who had hair the same blue as theirs. The boy was doing something with little clay figures on a smaller table that was also cluttered, and he too ignored Nina.
Father took her by the shoulder and moved her to the table, so she was standing right in front of the white-haired woman in a big green coat who was her mother. "Nina. This woman looks like your mother from the portraits in the castle, doesn't she?"
"Yes," said Nina.
The woman who was her mother shook her head. "I don't understand this," she said. Her voice was almost as soft as a whisper. "I can't believe it. If you say I'm the queen, why was I left to live out here for years?"
"We looked for you, Robin." Her father's voice was still the same kind of gentle. "Morgan's spent the whole of that time searching the world for you. I've searched as well."
"And he claims to be my son, yet he's nearly as old as I am." Her mother's voice was louder. "What am I supposed to believe?"
"I know Morgan's...situation is difficult to accept," said Father. "I'm not asking you to believe or even listen to it right now. But your own child bears the Mark, and resembles us both. Is that not enough to convince you that I am your husband?"
"Convince me that you are my husband?" The woman who was her mother had a bitter smile. "My earliest true memory is of waking up alone in Plegia, a country which had just been conquered by Ylisse. Nothing on me would suggest that I was – royalty, of all things." She stared into her lap. "Soon I realize I am pregnant, and when my son is born with the Mark of the Exalt...do you think 'missing queen' is the conclusion I came to, Chrom?"
Father's face changed. "You just said my name."
Her mother frowned. "As if I...shouldn't have?"
"Morgan never said it," Father said. "Unless you're going to tell me they know it well in this village."
Her mother stared at him for a long time. Then she looked at something to the side, and Nina wondered if she was allowed to move. Her mother rose and walked towards them from around the table. Nina watched as she looked up at Father, still frowning. With a very stern look in her eyes, the woman who was her mother put her hand to the side of his face.
Father didn't say anything. After just a minute her mother dropped her hand, then knelt right in front of Nina.
"Is this...Lucina?"
"We call her Nina. Lucina is older, like Morgan." Her father stood close as her mother got up. "Is it coming back to you?"
"No. It's not coming back to me." Her mother wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head. "It's always been with me – names that I know, though I don't remember from where, and...images."
She started shaking her head again, slowly, but this time she didn't stop. Father lifted his hand like he was going to put it on her shoulder, but put it back down instead.
"Robin," he said. "Robin. You've always known that to be your name, right?"
Her mother was still shaking her head. "I can't –"
This time her father did put his hand on her mother's shoulder, and the head-shaking stopped. Her mother stared down at the ground.
"Come with us to Ylisstol," said Father. "You'll find some of those images there. I'm sure of it."
It wasn't until later that the woman who was her mother said she would go. Nina remembered standing to the side in the big room and then outside in the smaller room while her father and her mother and Morgan continued to talk. She tried her best to not move much and be very quiet, since she had the feeling – although she knew it probably wasn't true – that something would break and they would all become upset if she so much as said a word.
But that did not happen, and it was another later before her mother gathered the few things she said were worth bringing and asked them all to wait while she went off to give some jars and bottles to a person in another house. By the time she came back, it was almost evening.
Nina was sent back into the carriage with the little boy, who was actually her brother named Abel.
She watched him as he climbed into the carriage with his clay figures stacked in his arms, one of them sitting precariously in the crook of his elbow. Once he was inside, he started standing them up in a line on one of the seats. "Is he Morgan's twin?" she asked Father.
"Yes," said her father, "you could say that."
He paused.
"Thank you for coming with me, Nina," he said, mussing her hair. "I'm sure your mother is glad that you came, too." But the woman who was her mother was near the guards with her arms still wrapped around herself, looking out the corner of her eye towards where Nina and her father were standing near Abel in the carriage.
When he left, and Nina climbed in the carriage and drew the curtain, Abel was still lining up his figures. Some of them kept falling over on the soft seat, and each time he went back and stood them up again so that they were exactly in line with the rest.
"Why are you lining them up?" Nina asked.
He didn't answer her. He had about ten figures – mages and priests and soldiers on horses – and they were each small enough to fit in her palm. It was mostly the mages and priests that kept falling over.
"Abel, do you talk?"
He turned around when she said that, but before he could say anything, the carriage moved and all of his figures fell at once. For a moment Abel looked like he might cry, but then he made an angry sound with his mouth closed and started setting them back up. Nina wasn't sure if she should help or not. The carriage stopped again, and the lady guard who had rode with her on the first journey rushed back inside.
"Your Grace," said the guard to Abel as she drew back the curtain a little, "do you want to look out the window as we go?" Abel didn't respond, and Nina figured he didn't know that the title was meant for him at all.
Nina didn't see Morgan as much as she did her sister, but she knew that he was clumsy and talked a lot. Abel wasn't like that at all. She sat back in her seat and, lifting another curtain, peered out the front window in Abel's stead. Morgan was driving now, and the woman who was their mother sat beside him. She was sitting on the edge of the bench with her head craned over her shoulder, and Nina realized that she was the only one watching the village go.
The journey back to the castle was longer because everybody stopped to sleep this time. They arrived at Ylisstol the next evening, but waited until it was dark to actually go to the castle. Father told her that they needed to be quiet because, while her mother was her mother, she wasn't yet ready to be queen again.
Nina was asked to leave her mother alone – unless approached, of course – for "a while", so she did. This made sense, Nina figured, because her mother didn't know her any more than the other way around. It seemed her mother spent her first days back just walking around the castle, sometimes with Abel, other times with Father. Then after a few days, she started talking too. Talking with Aunt Lissa or the captain or the guards or the maids or the chef. Talking especially with Morgan, and once when Nina saw them in the gardens she thought her mother might have been crying, but knew better than to say anything.
Lucina showed up only a week later alongside her husband, bearing no gifts but many apologies – Mother I'm sorry, I thought I'd seen you killed with my own eyes, if I had known I would have crossed the world twice more in searching – enough that Inigo began to insist that was exactly what they had been doing, and that Lucina was selling herself short on a few scattered doubts.
Over time, there were many visits from old friends of her mother's and her father's, comrades from the war. And every time Nina saw her mother meet somebody new, Nina noticed that she would spend most of her time staring at the visitor, frowning like she had frowned at Father in Plegia. Sometimes, something would brighten in her mother's face and she would start to smile and talk like she was relieved. But other times she would spend the whole visit staring and go back to her room afterwards with her chin down, still frowning.
One one occasion after her mother's return, Nina had been taken away to change her clothes after dinner, and when she went to back to sit with her father like usual she instead found him walking the great hall with her mother and her new brother, Abel on his hand tonight, not her. Nina stood next to one of the statues under the balcony, hoping that they would see her as they passed by and ask her to join. As she waited, she heard voices behind her from in the hall she'd come by.
"– haven't come entirely back, have they?" It was her sister.
"No." This was Morgan. "And, honestly, I've started to think they never will. Sometimes, such as when you're telling me about something we did in our time, I'll recognize it – as in, I'll have this feeling saying, 'yes, that sounds about right.' But I don't remember having experienced it."
"If you know who you are, though," said Inigo, "what's the difference? I mean..." He paused. "I know there are memories you'd want to recover. And I understand that it must be frustrating to keep up with what everybody else remembers of you. But I'd think that it's worse to have nobody remember you in the first place, right?"
"Oh, well, yeah," said Morgan. "But –"
"But you didn't wake up to find yourself the ruling king," said Lucina. "Or a parent, for that matter. I only...I don't want her to think herself trapped in a life she doesn't remember choosing. Morgan, I told you how she tried to leave in our time. Father could barely stop her then, and I don't know he would have the heart to if it's because she can't even remember –"
Morgan cut in. "But now you know why she tried to leave last time. This isn't anything like that –"
"Which is why I wish it doesn't happen. Father was miserable –"
"But she is remembering. Haven't you noticed?"
Her parents stopped before a portrait of the previous Exalt that hung across the hall. Nina saw her father say something, and her mother nod.
"In any case," said Morgan, now very near her hiding place and speaking in a hushed tone, "even if she can't totally remember...I don't think it will bother her as much as you think, Lucina. I mean...she always took well to being queen for its own sake, didn't she?" There was silence, and no answer. "Besides, it's not like she hasn't dealt with memory loss before."
"It's not?" said Inigo. "Oh...right. See, we actually have evidence that your mother's going to be fine." (Her sister made a sound, something like a huff or a laugh. They had to be standing in the entryway.) "What I'm also curious about is, what's the consensus on Morgan the second over there?"
Morgan laughed. "He's named Abel, for one. Still, it's weird looking at him and knowing that's somebody I could have been. Lucina, is this what you feel when you're near Nina?"
Nina felt something cold in her chest, like the feeling she had when she had gotten in trouble and was being scolded. She shrunk backwards against the wall beside the statue.
"A little bit," said Lucina. "I'm getting used to it as she grows. To be honest, it's stranger when I see similarities between us, because it reminds me she's more than just my sister."
"Then maybe I should be relieved that Abel's so different. Well, seems to be. Mother told me his birthday's actually a couple weeks after mine; now that I think about it, that probably explains it..."
"But his Mark is in the same place, isn't it?" asked Inigo. "Which means he was still probably you. Which means, remarkably enough, that you could have grown up even stranger than Lucina tells me –"
Nina didn't hear if Lucina told him off, because she was running across the great hall to get her parents, who had gone down another corridor. She ran past the portraits of the Exalts, and saw them down at the end; but her father was leaning down to say something to Abel and she had been told to let her mother be, so she stayed where she was until they took the fork to the left. Nina went the other direction – up the stairs, past the surprised guards, into the private part of the castle, and through the door to her father's room, where she jumped onto the great big bed and buried her head under the pillows.
Eventually, she thought, he would come in and find her, and ask her what was wrong. She remained beneath the pillows, burying herself deeper bit by bit, until she heard voices outside the door, and realized that it might not be her father but some guard who wanted to get her in trouble for running inside the castle. In a panic, she dug under the sheets as well.
The door opened. "Nina."
It was her father's voice. She lay very still.
One side of the mattress sank. "Nina. Will you come out?"
"Lucina thinks it's strange being near me." Her voice came out muffled.
"That's not what Lucina meant," said Father. "She would like to speak to you. Will you allow her in?"
Nina peered out from under one of the pillows. Her father was sitting on the side of the bed, looking at her like he was concerned.
"Is Mother with you?" she mumbled.
"Mother took Abel to bed."
She took the rest of the pillows off her head and crawled out from beneath the sheets, then sat and pulled her legs against her chest. "Lucina can come in."
Father opened the door, and her sister ran in. "Nina, I'm sorry for what I said. I spoke without thinking." She knelt on the bed. "I love being with you. You're my only sister."
"You said you felt strange near me," said Nina, her mouth against her knees.
Lucina moved to cross her legs. "I used to think it felt strange to think about how we were born the same way, yes. But as you've gotten older, I've seen more and more how you've become your own person." She leaned forward and set her hand very close to Nina, but did not touch her. "You are your own person, Nina. I know that."
Nina scooted away from her hand. "But you said we were similar."
Lucina thought about this for a moment. "Yes, we're similar," she said. "But we're not the same. Your favorite food isn't pheasant, is it?"
Nina shook her head.
"And I never helped out much in the garden. Father told me how much you like to do that."
"Did you like climbing trees?"
"I liked climbing trees," Lucina admitted. "But even things we have in common I know you've found on your own. And that makes me proud more than anything else." There was silence. "Nina, will you forgive me?"
"I forgive you," she muttered, and let Lucina stroke the side of her head.
"Nina," said Father, "why don't you let your sister take you to bed? She's leaving tomorrow morning."
"I won't be gone long, though. Inigo and I will be back soon for Mother's first presentation." Lucina held out her hand and smiled. "Come on, Nina."
So Nina let her sister lead her out of their father's room to the nursery, which was still where Nina slept, even though Abel would be sleeping there and she would be moving to her own room soon. Lucina hugged her, and said again how she loved her, and then left so that her nurse could get her ready for bed, but not before mentioning that she'd had a different nurse for most of the time growing up (since when Morgan was born Junia was the only one who could wrangle him), and so there was something else they didn't have in common.
Nina bathed and dressed while her nurse wondered aloud how much trouble she might expect from Abel if his brother had been so bad, which told Nina that her nurse was going to be given to Abel too, and she fussed at this until Nurse reassured her that Nina was old enough now that she was going to look after them both. And so Nina let herself be tucked in without any trouble, since she was less upset than she had been earlier; but just before she went to sleep she decided that she was going to stop liking pheasant as much as she had before.
A/N: Oh, to be a young child who spends all day long lining up toys and figures.
(10/8) Fixed the formatting of section breaks. They should make sense now.