Reasons to Celebrate

The first thing that greeted Ike was heat. The skin of his right arm felt like it stood in flames, and his twitching fingers brushed against rough scales, each one hot enough to pose as one of the watchfires on the Black Wall. To make matters worse, Ike's head was ringing as though an earthquake had ravaged the insides of his skull.

Funny, he couldn't remember drinking any alcohol.

With a groan, Ike craned his eyes open. The linen sheets of a tent ceiling and a familiar face greeted him.

"Happy anniversary!" Cherche chirped as she bent over him. Her long strands looked a little disheveled without her hairband, and her cheerful tone failed to overplay the dark rings under her eyes.

Ike tried to push himself up and flinched when the pain receptors in his arm and around his hipbone exploded. Those weren't signs of a normal hangover. Wonderful. He stifled a curse and dropped his head back to the ground.

"Easy there, Ike," Cherche said. "Soren put too much time into knitting you back together. He'll conjure a tornado if you ruin his hard work."

Ike ran his tongue over his teeth to chase away the stale dryness in his mouth. With little success. "Don't tell me it's already the Empire's anniversary. Tell me this is one of your jokes."

"Oh, but it is the anniversary alright. If you hadn't been so busy killing yourself, you'd have seen the fireworks from Aurelis at midnight. Quite the spectacular light show they put up, I have to give them that."

"And why aren't you and the others occupying Aurelis' docks as planned?"

All the hard work, all the months of preparation and the favors he had traded in, wasted. Ike felt the urge to spit on his bad luck, but the dryness in his mouth denied him the satisfaction.

Cherche poked his side, and Ike sucked in a breath when another pang hijacked his nervous system. "Because you still looked like you would die under our hands a couple hours ago. You were kicking and trembling, and you bled like a pig in a wyvern pit. What were we supposed to do, leave you at the sluice?"

"Precisely."

"You know what, maybe we should have done that. I have better things to do than sit next to you while a fever eats you from the inside." Cherche ran her fingers along the bandages around Ike's arm and shoulder. "But in case you forgot, your plan to capture Aurelis needs eleven people. Since we were short one man already, we thought it better to wait for you to rejoin us in the land of the living."

Ike tried to sit up a second time, but his efforts only earned him dizziness and a surge of nausea. A large, scaled head snuggled against his shoulder to stabilize him, and Ike stared into one of Minerva's intelligent reptile eyes. She had squeezed into the tent and radiated the heat Ike had felt before. Time to establish a little distance between himself and the set of large teeth.

"And what is that oversized lizard doing here instead of scouting the area?" he asked and shoved the wyvern's snout out of his face.

Cherche punched his upper leg, which up until this point had been the only part of Ike's body that didn't feel like it had made the acquaintance of a dragon-sized pestle. "Injuries aren't helping your manners it seems. I told you, you had a fever. You needed the body heat."

"So, to get things straight, you don't know our status, and we're sitting ducks on Pheraen territory."

"Oh Ike, when will a woman finally have mercy on you, so you get something other than your job to think about?"

"I took a break for…" Ike counted the days since the sluice in his head and made a face. "Two days. Isn't that enough?"

"Considering you spent the majority of these two days in blood-loss-infused delirium, I'd have to say no." Cherche locked eyes with Ike and drew thoughtless circles on the back of his palm. "We were all worried. I've never seen Titania so pale. And Soren was working himself to the brink of collapse, all because he didn't prevent you from storming the sluice all by yourself."

"I did it for the mission. The least you could have done is make the most out of my death."

Cherche jutted her chin. "Well, excuse us, we weren't thrilled to repeat the experience so soon after… after Oscar." She averted her gaze and fiddled with a shallow bowl of water beside her. The mug she tried to fill slipped and clattered to the ground once before she managed to hand Ike the drink. "I don't even know how the people of Tellius handle their dead."

Ike downed the content of the mug, and after the cool liquid comforted his throat, he felt a little less like a corpse.

"We burn the bodies," he said.

Cherche looked at him in disbelief. "Like the Pheraens? You burn the bodies of your loved ones? But this way they will never see the eternal paradise!"

"Nagaism isn't exactly common in Tellius. It's hard to believe in a saving grace when a Black Knight is slaughtering your neighbors by the dozen."

Minerva, irritated by Ike's spiteful tone, stretched and draped her tail over his legs to keep him in place. That knocked a good portion of his enthusiasm to argue out of him, and he sank back into the sheets. Stupid oversized lizard.

"Well," Cherche said, "if you manage to kill yourself in one of your solo missions, don't expect me to set you on fire afterwards. I'd like to preserve these well-defined arms for the eternal paradise, thank you very much."

Ike straightened as far as Minerva's weighty tail allowed and probed the several bandages crisscrossing over his upper body. He wasn't in the mood to laugh. The soldiers at the sluice had to have landed a few more hits against him than he had realized; red discolored the bandages in several places. The arrow wound at his arm would leave another scar. In two days, he might return to a state where he could swing Ragnell without the exertion killing him. But what good would that do now? The anniversary celebrations would have ended long before that. The soldiers in Aurelis would return to their stations, better equipped to fend off Ike's little party than ever. With their precious Empire turned eighteen, they would throw themselves at the enemy with twice the enthusiasm.

The plan had failed. All because Ike's comrades chained themselves to sentimentalities.

"Why didn't you go to Aurelis without me?" he asked. "You want to return to Persis, don't you? With Aurelis destroyed and the king's eyes focused there, you could have made it."

Cherche avoided eye contact. She rose to her feet and walked over to Minerva to rest her forehead against the wyvern's scaly face. The creature grumbled, a sound fitting for a large cat, not exactly a murderous reptile that could rip Cherche's head from her shoulders with a single bite.

Ike filled himself another cup of water. From somewhere to his left, the hushed sounds of Soren's spell practice reached his ears.

"Of course I want to go back to Persis," Cherche said after a long while. "That's why I tagged along in the first place. But I can't bottle up my emotions and pretend they don't exist. Not like you do. And I'm not ready to lose more people in this party in exchange for a chance to rebuild empty homes. At this point, maybe it's better to keep close what we still have. Before we lose that too."

Ike said nothing.

A jolt went through Cherche, and her lost cheer returned to the forefront, punctuated by a wide smile. "I'm gonna go tell the others you woke up. Soren has prepared a long scolding for you. So you better don't go anywhere."

Ike gestured at Minerva's tail, which worked better than any set of shackles. "I think that threat is taken care of."

Cherche ignored his dry remark, shot him a grin, and left the tent.

With her gone, and only the wyvern left to judge him, Ike gave into the throbbing in his head and closed his eyes. The mere act of sitting and talking had used up more of his energy than he liked to admit. In truth, he was a wreck. He had delayed the mission by two days already, and unless one of the accursed gods worked a miracle, he wouldn't leave the tent before tomorrow either.

Even if he did, what would that help?

He had poured everything he had into the strike against Aurelis, had staked everything on this one card. But he had lost the bet. With a few more men he might still take the port, but capable Altean fighters ready to take the chance against the Pheraen Empire didn't come by in flocks. Not after they had had eighteen years to acclimatize themselves to the new order. And for all Ike knew, Cordelia and the others had died in Gran. The rest of his sympathizers wouldn't pick up a weapon if he came begging on his knees.

The rebellion was done for. Only a matter of time before Roy's forces picked them apart.

Despite the breath rattling in his chest, Ike pushed himself on one elbow and placed the other hand on Ragnell; Cherche or someone else had left the sword leaning against the tent post. Ike ran his thumb along the edge until it cut. After all the blood the steel had tasted and all the battles it had fought, Ragnell showed no sign of rust. The gold shone with the same perfection as on the day it had left the forge.

Too bad the sword hadn't found the hands of a more worthy wielder.

In the moment Ike turned away from Ragnell, the curtains of the tent entrance flew open, and both a storm and Soren entered.

"You are the most brick-headed simpleton I ever had the displeasure to meet, and the more time I spent around you, the more I am inclined to believe that there lies nothing between your ears other than cotton." Soren threw his arms in the air, and the storm knocked over the water bowl. Minerva hissed. "I had to swim through a river to reach you in time!"

Titania, who had followed Soren into the tent, raised a hand. "That's enough, Soren. I think he heard the message."

"I would like to disagree. Gentle reminders are incapable of passing through his thick skull, and he has been missing someone to shout him back into line for too many years. His megalomania has clogged his ears and his ability of logical thought."

Ike raised a brow. "Are you done?"

"No, I am not. Your limited understanding of magic might have prevented you from recalling this, but I am not a healer. I cannot conjure a spell to patch you back together every time you stride into one of your solo outings. And to make this so clear even you will understand, I refuse to partake in any further missions with you unless you hire a healer first. Are we clear?"

"Yes, Sir." Ike saluted, but the pain in his shoulders rendered the gesture rather grotesque. "Are you done now?"

Soren took a deep breath, and the wind stopped its assault on the tent walls. "Yes. Thank you for your cooperation." With a last glare, he sat down cross-legged opposite of Ike's makeshift bed.

"How are you feeling?" Titania asked with a nod towards the multitude of bandages wrapped around Ike's bare chest.

Terrible for an answer would offer a little too much honesty. Ike had to at least somewhat maintain his face.

"I've had worse," he said instead.

Titania gave him her trademark motherly smile. "I know. But I hope this won't become the norm with you. A little bit of you should survive long enough to reap the fruits of your work after we have freed Archanea from the clutches of the Pheraen Empire, don't you think?"

"We'll see. At the moment our chances don't look too good. Anything else happened while I was out?"

Soren and Titania exchanged a look.

"Because you opened the sluice for us, only half a day's worth of travel separates us from Aurelis," Soren said.

Ike raised a hand to massage the sensitive spot between his brows. The throbbing in his head was getting worse. "We can forget Aurelis. That carriage has left the station"

"Not necessarily."

"What Soren means to tell you," Titania said, "is that the defenses of Aurelis are far weaker than we expected. This morning the majority of soldiers left the town. Sothe watched them leave."

Ike sat up straighter. Could they be lucky for once?

"Why should they do that?" he asked.

Soren rearranged the bowl he had knocked over, which had lost its purpose without the water inside. "We can only make assumptions. But the fact of the matter stands that the soldiers were heading towards Lycia. It seems the king is concentrating his forces at the capital. Which only leaves one possible explanation: Roy has reason to believe a significant threat is challenging his rule."

Ike snorted. "I wanna see the enemy that has Roy worried."

"He is not all-powerful, and I believe he is more aware of his limits than you are," Soren said. "Could the Black Knight be headed towards Lycia?"

"That's about as likely as a godly intervention from your beloved Naga."

Titania chose to ignore Ike's sarcasm. "Could Cordelia and her group have a plan in the works? Ike, you saw them last, did it seem to you like they plotted a pre-emptive strike against the capital?"

"No. They lack the manpower. For all I know, they got wiped out in Gran on the evening I left them."

Soren tugged at his lower lip, deep in thought. "I believe we can rule out all the rebel movements we know about; Roy has no reason to fear any Altean forces, even if they happen to double their numbers overnight. But an event contrary to his plans might make him nervous. What do we know about the deserter the Pheraens were looking for in the last village?"

"You really think a single deserter will get Roy worked up like this?" Ike asked.

A single individual against the entirety of Lycia's defenses might make for quite the pretty picture, but Roy would squish the brave moron under his thumb in a matter of seconds. Not a good enough reason to leave Aurelis without sufficient protection.

"Perhaps, depending on the identity of the deserter," Soren said. "If one of the Twelve Knights were to turn on the Empire, they could pose a serious problem for the integrity of Roy's territory."

"Okay, you got me. At this point I'd sooner believe that the Black Knight broke through the border wall and is marching towards Lycia as we speak." Ike fought against his growing exhaustion to gain Soren's full attention with a glare. "Lucky accidents like that don't happen to us. The Empire won't suddenly break apart from the inside because of oh, how fortunate that would be. The rebellion's always been on us, and if we don't act, no one else will. At best, the deserter ran off with Roy's favorite horse."

Titania leaned back a little and nodded. "Aurelis might be a trap."

"Certainly. Which gives us all the more reason to get into contact with the deserter. At worst, we lose a few days. At best, however, we might not only gain another ally but also invaluable data on troop movements, equipment, secret passages into the royal palace…"

"That would take too long," Ike said. "They could hide anywhere, if they even exist in the first place."

"We have missed the window with the anniversary already and—"

Ike cut Soren off before he could remind Ike of the reason why they had missed the window. "And by the time we'd get back to Aurelis after chasing ghosts, the port's gonna be better fortified than ever."

"We could wait and see how much truth there is to the rumors about the deserter," Titania suggested. "The situation around Aurelis has changed dramatically, and we were prepared for none of these changes. It would be unwise to jump into the river now without knowing how deep the waters are."

Soren confirmed his agreement with a nod, and they both looked at Ike.

Maybe a delay would be the smart route. Assess the situation and develop a new plan, a plan better fit to account for all possibilities, from random sluices to deserters and godly interventions. But the rebellion had tarried for eighteen years. Eighteen long years. And the longer the little skirmishes and attacks on supply lines lasted, the more people Ike lost. Not just those the Empire put to the sword, but those who gave up.

Persis, for example, had been a disaster. Abel had rather accepted Roy's suppression than continue the fight. The moronic rebel from Gran, the one with the puffy eyes, had taken to his heels the moment the opportunity presented itself. They and so many others had given up, the memories from before the imperial reign faded, and their fighting spirit crumbled under the sound of Roy's laughter. Even Cherche was ready to lay down her axe in order to keep close what little the Empire had left her.

That was how Roy would win. By killing a few and crippling the rest. Until no one would stand against him.

"I hear you," Ike said. "You have a point. But time is playing against us. The longer we wait, the smaller our window of operation becomes, and if we don't score a win now, we never will."

Soren sighed. "Please tell me this is not going where I think it is going."

"I don't expect you to join me."

"I am aware of this. Unfortunately, no one else will remind you of your mortality if I do not watch over your shoulder."

Ike accepted Soren's decision with a nod. He had to admit he felt better now that Soren had reaffirmed his loyalty. A potentially dangerous loyalty for sure – but a selfish part of Ike was thankful.

He turned over to Titania. "You know my answer already," she said. "I made this choice eighteen years ago, and no matter what happens, I will ensure you make it to the end alive."

Ike nodded. "Good. Make sure everyone's on the same page with the plan and still remembers their role. Whatever awaits us, we'll deal with it. Around this time in two days, the imperial ships at Aurelis will burn."

The fire Ike had promised Gregor and Cordelia would light up the eastern sky. And if a trap waited for them at Aurelis and took the lives of every last one of Ike's party members… well, at least the rebellion wouldn't go down in silence.


Notes: This is unrelated to the story, but I thought I could mention it regardless. (Also because I have nothing to add to the chapter at hand.) In case you haven't seen it already, I have used a bit of my free time to write a Fire Emblem one shot, which is now up on my profile. If you like Awakening and are interested in seeing me experiment with patterns and first person POV, please check out "Puppet". That is all.

Next week, we are going to deal with Lucina's post-anniversary trauma. So that should be fun!