Takes place right off the end of chapter 7 of And They Called Her Nina. It's not really standalone in the way that Harebones is, but you can probably get the gist.

There were at least two people who asked about a fic like this after I revealed Cordelia's widowhood in ATCHN, and I mentioned to at least one that I was considering writing it already. I hope this scratches that itch.


For the first time in several months, possibly more, Cordelia lost her footing stepping into the mud of the training ground from the barracks' gravel path.

She had been thinking over the conversation she'd just had with one of her recruits in the armory, only to find the toe of her boot slipping forward in the slick ground. With one great step forward, she caught herself from falling; it was only over the next few steps that she was able to regain her balance.

This happened with no small amount of private embarrassment. She should have been expecting the mud. It had been a mild winter so far in Ylisstol, temperature-wise; but that hadn't stopped it from raining at least twice a week, persistent dreary drizzles that soaked the ground like an autumn that wouldn't let go. Hadn't she crossed the training ground just a few hours ago? Well – no, actually. She'd stuck to the paths most of today. And yesterday had been the last time she sparred...

Severa, walking ahead of her, stopped and glanced over her shoulder. "You okay?"

"I'm fine," said Cordelia quickly.

"Just checking." Secure in her flatter shoes, Severa continued across the training ground. Cordelia took long strides to walk beside her once more. They were crossing the training ground towards the main building of the barracks, where Cordelia needed to stop by her office to drop off a paper and lock up for the night before she and Severa headed off to the cemetery.

It was Sunday, January 5th. Severa had come to town a bit early this year.

They were halfway across the mud-streaked field when Severa spoke. "So that's the standing princess of Ylisse."

Cordelia thought back to her surprise when, after finishing her conversation with Jeanette, she had opened the armory doors to find Nina standing by her pegasus. Come to fetch training gear, apparently. If it were any other soldier, Cordelia might have dissuaded her from going into the armory right that moment, but the two trainees – well, one former now – were known to be friends. "Yes. What do you think of her?"

"What do I think of her? Not much."

Cordelia smiled slightly. "Careful. That's one of my girls you're talking about."

"I just mean that she didn't strike me any which way. She doesn't have that...sternness that Lucina has." She shrugged. "But then again, we exchanged about ten words."

Cordelia allowed herself to wonder, not for the first time, if Severa might be different had she not been raised in war. "The trainee I was talking with in the armory – they're close, you know."

"Are they? Is that why you didn't turn her away?"

Cordelia nodded.

"Do you think she's going to convince her to stay, or something?"

"No, I don't think that," said Cordelia. "Without going into the details of her situation, I think she's committed to leaving." After all, she had a piece of parchment in her coat pocket saying so. "But Nina could do with a chance to hear it from Jeanette's mouth before she vanishes from the barracks, at least."

"Or they could end up in some kind of fight over it."

"Perhaps. But I trust them to behave better than children."

Severa halted, momentarily. "Perhaps you do."

Cordelia felt a jolt in her chest, and an instinctual urge to apologize.

She continued on without saying anything. It was in the best interests of crown, country, and the girls themselves for knights of Ylisse to be trained from adolescence. It would be impugning Cordelia's own upbringing to say otherwise.

She supposed, in any case, that that was another argument for letting Jeanette alone. If she was old enough to fight and die for the halidom, then surely she was old enough to decide that she would rather marry instead. After all, Cordelia had not been much older when she made the decision to do both.

"Here." Shoes crunching once more on the gravel path, they arrived at the central building of the pegasus knights' barracks, where Cordelia had her small office. "I'll just run inside to drop this off."

"Sure," said Severa. "I'll wait out here."

Cordelia stepped quickly through the building, which functioned both as an archive and a meeting hall. Behind the hall, right before the rooms full of shelves and shelves of recruitment contracts and squad rosters and casualty records, there was a small office for the captain of the pegasus knights. Cordelia spent more time in here than she would have liked to. But it was better than shoving off any part of her duty to a secretary.

The cluttered little room – Cordelia, after all, was not perfect – greeted her in shadows. Cordelia had put out the lamp when she left earlier, and instead of lighting it back, she kept the door open and worked by the lamplight from the hall instead. She took out from her pocket the document that formally confirmed Jeanette Alderman's departure from the pegasus knights, and spread it on the table. Then she uncorked her ink, picked up her pen, and signed her name on the line under Jeanette's, leaving a paperweight on top to keep it from folding back up while the ink dried. She would file it properly in the morning.

Just before locking the door of the office behind her, she peeked inside the wooden mail-holder on the wall outside. There were two pieces of mail. Something folded over itself, likely a request for leave or somesuch – she placed that on her desk as well. Then an envelope, made of fine heavy paper, addressed to "Captain Cordelia" in a cursive hand. It didn't look internal, which left something that had been routed from the public mailbox that sat outside the barracks' gate.

It couldn't be, she thought. Not another one.

She turned it over and saw the glittery red wax, stamped not with any personal seal but with an image of a fully-bloomed rose. Half of her told her to tuck the envelope inside her coat and bring it home to toss into the fire, but the other half, screaming just as loudly, was morbidly curious. And that half won out.

The letter inside was messy, nearly inscrutable, in a heavily-flourished – yet, Cordelia was fairly certain, masculine – script. After a few seconds, the first lines revealed themselves to her:

O Captain, my sweetest captain,

Who hold duty dear to her breast,

Its beauty increased, not marred, by –

Cordelia quickly smothered the paper to said breast and looked furtively around in the off-chance some other soul in the building had appeared behind her and started reading over her shoulder. Without looking back down at the words, she shoved the letter back into its envelope, folded it as small as it could go, and stuffed it down into her coat pocket.

This was the second letter she had received from the mysterious suitor who marked himself by the rose seal. If this one continued like the first, there would be several stanzas of poetry that increasingly had less and less to do with Cordelia herself, followed by a long paragraph in which the author again waxed love for her, and bid her leave some token on the front gates of the barracks if she was interested in meeting him face-to-face. Yet, to make this hypothetical meeting as difficult as it could possibly be, it would be signed by "Your Steadfast Admirer", no name or return address.

Cordelia had been able to laugh off the first one, but if they kept coming, she would be at a loss what to do.

She wondered if she should ask the knights on mail duty to simply discard any further letters instead of delivering them. No – that would just draw attention to the fact that she was receiving them, wouldn't it? But it would make it clear that she had no interest. In that case, however, how long would it take for her suitor to get the message and stop sending them? If there was any indication that it was somebody who knew her – one of the knights from the main barracks, perhaps – then it would be best if she addressed the matter gently and firmly. But so long as it was some stranger from the city, she would be better off not responding.

It wasn't as though Cordelia had never had admirers, but these letters showed a level of – well – investment that she had not seen before. To be frank, it scared her a little.

She took a deep breath and closed the office door. Today was not the day for worrying about this. The correct course of action would probably come to her, as most things did, after training tomorrow.

Outside, she found Severa inspecting the stitching on her gloves. "Sorry about that," said Cordelia.

"It's fine."

Cordelia exhaled, letting out a puff of breath in the chilly air. "Well then. Shall we go?"

Severa nodded, and together they started down the main path out of the barracks.

"You still seem jittery," said Severa. "Did something happen in there?"

Cordelia forced a laugh. "Oh, it was just – something in my mail. Sometimes there are, you know, silly letters from people in the city."

"Silly? How so?"

"Well...either asking me to do something I can't do, or else declaring love for me," said Cordelia. "Or declaring hatred for me, I suppose. Those are about the ways they go."

She did not want to say more and interrupt the solemnity of this evening, and did not know what she would say if Severa asked her to clarify which type of letter she received today. But Severa did not ask for more as they stepped onto the cobbled streets of Ylisstol. Rather she was silent for a moment before saying, "This has nothing to do with whatever you got, but the way you put it reminded me of the letters Dad used to write."

"That he wrote to you?" Gregor had gotten along reading common words, but Cordelia had not known him to be entirely literate in her language.

"Well, they were more like notes. If he had to go out for a day, he'd leave a note like, 'remember bring in laundry!'" – here she lowered her voice and bent it in imitation of her father's speech – "and it would have a little drawing of me, I guess it was supposed to be, collapsed under a pile of sheets. Or – another one was, if he went out hunting he might leave a note like 'if lucky, deer tonight!' so that I'd know to leave the stove clear or whatever, and it would have a picture of the deer giving a thumbs-up in front of its own carcass." She scratched the side of her face, looking upwards in thought. "Actually, I think that drawing had antlers, but I know 'deer' is what he wrote."

Now it made sense, because Cordelia full well remembered the other half. "That's right. I remember his drawings. I never knew him to leave notes with them, but he would sketch things with whatever ink and paper he would find, and leave them around for me." There was one, of a rather risque couple intended to be the two of them, that he had drawn shortly after their ad hoc wedding at camp. It sat preserved in a file at the bottom of a drawer in Cordelia's desk at home. "Did you ever receive one from him in this time, for as long as...you were together in the army?"

Severa was silent for a moment. A lamplight passed over her face. "No," she said. Then, more uncertainly: "I don't think so. Unless...the deer one was actually at camp?" She stared heavenwards again. "Gods, you'd think – I would be able to remember something like that."

"The army was a long time ago, now."

"Yes. But my time was even longer ago, from my point of view at least." She adjusted her winter cape over her shoulders. "I can't believe I'm getting them mixed up. I used to think that I could never get them mixed up."

They turned under an awning. This was the city quarter that contained the grounded knights' barracks. At the end of the street, the storefronts fell away, and the gate to the war cemetery stood short and dark.

"I wish you still had some of the notes he left you," said Cordelia. "So that I could see his handwriting."

"Yes," said Severa. "Me too."

The gate was ice cold and slightly wet as Cordelia pushed it open. She closed it behind the two of them, the bars scraping over the cobblestones. Due north was the lawn where they buried those who had been lucky enough to die close to home. Cordelia and her daughter walked past it and turned onto the path that took them to the tall stone columbariums towards the back.

Even after the scourge of the Risen, cremation wasn't common in Ylisse. But it wasn't prohibited. The army cremated soldiers whose remains had to travel to their final resting place. And since Gregor had never said exactly where he was from – he hadn't even said it when Robin was helping him fill out his enlistment form – that had defaulted to Cordelia's decision. He was to be either buried intact on the Valmese mountain where he had died, or shipped back to her hometown, Ylisstol.

Thus had her tall, strong husband been burnt in a fire, a designated twenty feet away from each next body in line on the mountainside, until he was gone, almost all of him, and the ashes he left behind were small enough to fit into a wooden box that she could hold in both hands. And that box was labeled and stacked with the others and put on the next convoy going home.

Cordelia remembered wishing that they had let her keep him somehow, instead of shipping him off alongside a squadron of other dead men he hardly knew. Then she could have been with him as long as possible. If any mishaps had occurred to the urn during the rest of the campaign – well, that would have created a story that Gregor would have just laughed at, anyway. But it was against protocol. And it would have been impossible to fit him in her pack.

She hadn't even gotten to spend a quarter as much time with him as her other self had in Severa's future.

They reached the row of stone blocks that was full of niches of those who had fallen during the Valmese campaign. Cordelia headed down it, counting the gaps between individual columbariums, until at the eighth she stopped and turned to the stone on the left. There, in the second column in this stone, was his name etched at about chest level. First his rightly born first name, then the name he used in life, then the family name with the foreign diphthong that Cordelia had elected not to take. She had never been able to pronounce it to Gregor's satisfaction, but she had been extremely careful to make sure they spelled it right when they labeled the urn.

She rested her hand on the front of the niche and closed her eyes. She did not move when Severa, standing next to her, did the same.

When Cordelia stepped back, her eyes lingered on the name in the stone. "Do you use his name?"

"What?"

"His family name."

"No. I use yours. When I need to."

Cordelia motioned towards the stone. She knew Severa had learned a bit of Gregor's language. "Can you pronounce it?"

Severa blinked at her. Then she said it, her accent perfect. "Why?" Her eyes narrowed. "What are you smiling for? Was that some kind of test?"

"No, it's just that I can't say it," Cordelia admitted. "So I'm glad that you can."

"You could let me teach you sometime," said Severa. "It's not that hard."

"I think my tongue might be fixed in its ways."

Severa shrugged. She stepped back from the columbinarium, then set her pack on the ground and took out a half-size bottle of wine. As Severa pulled out the cork with a grunt, Cordelia unclipped her empty canteen from her belt, and held it out so her daughter could pour in a splash.

Severa turned back to the grave. She raised the bottle, and Cordelia her canteen.

"Happy birthday to Dad," said Severa. "Cheers."

Cordelia downed her wine. Severa, in a move that would have made Gregor proud, proceeded to chug nearly the entire bottle, saving only the last mouthful to pour into the soil at the foot of the tall stone. A few drops bounced onto the nameplate of poor Tomal Shoemaker, who rested in the bottom row.

She wondered if Tomal Shoemaker, who bore a trade rather than a family name, had known what he was getting into as well as Gregor had – or even as well as Cordelia herself had. Which wasn't very well to begin with, as she had learned.

Her entire squad had been killed behind her, and it didn't even make the death of her husband hurt any less.

"You don't ever blame me," said Severa, "do you?"

"For what?"

"For...for coming back here with the rest of them and acting like we were going to save the world. Pretending that we were going to make things perfect, but there were...still so many people that died." She swallowed. "I couldn't even save Dad."

Cordelia stared at Gregor's niche.

In truth, she had devoted at least a day to blaming each and every thing possible. Starting with herself, for letting Gregor go off on his own in the battle. Moving to Robin, whose battle plan had been like a betrayal on top of old sour resentment. Then the armorer – the emperor of Valm – in one shameful moment, Phila, for having left Cordelia to survive on her own. She even made herself blame Chrom at one point. And, yes, anger towards her daughter and the other children from the future had been in there as well.

But this had all come and gone. Now she did not blame anybody, because there was no one person to blame, unless she was to try blaming fate or Naga Herself.

"Do you remember when we first met in Plegia?" said Cordelia. "How you accused me of choosing Chrom over you?" She exhaled. "When I said my future self must have been fighting for you the whole time...I know now that that was true. Because after your father died, you were the main reason I remained alive."

Severa was silent for a long time. She nudged her toe at the small spot of wine in the dirt. "Blame or no blame, that's a lot of pressure to put on me. I should hope that you've found something else since then, too." She looked Cordelia straight in the eyes, a rarity. "You deserve to have reasons to live whether I'm here or not, you know? Dad would want that much for you."

"I do have other reasons," said Cordelia honestly. She straightened her shoulders. "Each day, I teach young women how to become knights of Ylisse, and how to become better versions of themselves. That's my calling." And – Cordelia had long since reconciled herself to this thought – these were the girls she might someday send to fight and die for the country. More grieving parents and war widowers.

A country needed to defend itself. Cordelia did what she did to ensure there were as few as possible.

Severa laughed a little. "That sounds like something you would find on a recruitment poster." Her shoulders heaved in a sigh. "To be honest, I don't envy you," she said. "I don't really envy any of them, either."

"That's good," said Cordelia softly. "I'd worry about you if you did."

They stood together, in silence, in front of the grave for another several minutes. Then Severa picked up the bottle and put it back in her bag. They wound their way back along their paths to the gate of the cemetery.

It was later, when they were near the inn where Cordelia would see her daughter off, that Severa must have thought they were a respectful enough distance away to say, "You know...you're still young. As am I. Have you ever so much as thought about...seeing anybody else? Ever? Because, you know, I wouldn't blame you if you did." Her tone was light. "And I know Dad wouldn't."

Cordelia paused, thinking. She was not surprised that Severa had asked this. Her first thought was that Severa saw enough men for the two of them, but she bit those words against her tongue.

"It's..." she started. "It doesn't have anything to do with feeling guilt about it. It's just that...it's never really occurred to me."

It had occurred to her, during the years when Robin was gone. And it was, in fact, because of guilt that she hadn't done anything about it. Good now, it turned out, that she hadn't.

But aside from that, she was being honest. She hadn't thought about it otherwise. She'd had her romance. She had, despite not bearing her in this lifetime, even gotten a daughter out of it. After all this, she had the sense that she shouldn't ask for any more.

Severa looked at her, probing. "You've really never thought about it?" she said eventually. "You don't feel lonely sometimes? Just – you know, if you ever wanted help in – looking for somebody, I guess..."

"I...I really don't think..." Staring at her feet, Cordelia put her hands in her pockets. As she did, her fingers brushed against the fold of the love letter she had stuffed inside.

Cordelia didn't need any help looking for people. Going by the sort who wanted to court her, she needed help keeping them off. And with that thought, she threw back her head and began to laugh.

"What?" Severa said. "Is that funny? What did I say?"

"It's not what you said! It's not what you said," Cordelia managed to gasp as she caught her breath. "It's just – I'm sorry if it's hard to believe, but I really am okay where I am." She caught her daughter's eyes, still grinning. "I'm not saying I could never meet somebody someday, but...no, I'm not lonely." And her conviction spread through her as she said it aloud. "I have so many friends in the knights and in the city. I keep up with half of the army. Just last week, Brady of all people invited me to his new place, can you believe it? He wanted me to look over a composition," she said. "I get to train and teach every day, and then I get to go home and rest in my own house, in my own name, knowing that I did the best I could." She took a deep breath, banishing the last of her laughter. "And I have you," she said. "So don't worry about me – at least not in regards to that."

Severa looked to the side, her face slightly red from having been included in Cordelia's blessings, or maybe it was just the cold. "Huh," she said. "I guess I haven't been doing a good enough job myself. I didn't know that Brady was still in the city."

"He's started tutoring the princess Emma on the harpsichord. Apparently she's a handful."

"The youngest one, right?"

"Yes. That's her."

Severa crossed her arms. Slowly, she came back to meet her mother's gaze. "You're happy, then?"

Standing in the cold of the city – her city, as much hers as it was the Exalt's or any knight or peasant's who wandered these streets, and still standing because of the war she had fought and won – Cordelia looked back at her daughter, who despite the circumstances of her arrival was her own flesh and blood, and Gregor's too, a living memory of the husband she had barely known. As alive in this time as Cordelia herself, and as the city and country they walked in.

It wasn't perfect. But by all means, it sounded better than her other self's go at it.

"Yes," said Cordelia, as sure in herself as she could be.

Severa smiled and turned back to the road. "Then maybe I do envy you, a little bit," she said. "But not too much."