Potential spoilers ahead. Read at your own discretion.
Storms clouds began to roll before the many shards that adorned the grand stained window of the palace, engulfing the capital city in a looming darkness and impending storm. The lit candles that lined the interior of the throne room offered little respite from the shadow that was cast over the daunting castle, whose walls seemed to climb ever so high into the clouds. The lone girl that sat on the ornate seat of the king had grown accustomed to such storms, they were as frequent as the incomplete moon that rose in the night sky. In fact, the girl relished times of quiet and solitude as these ever since she ascended the throne many a season ago. Moments like such, where the flickering of the candlelight and the patter of the rain were her only companion, allowed her to escape from the clasp of court life and responsibilities, if even only for a while. With her back to the rest of the castle, and her worries, she basked within the gloomy world the storm had brought before her.
Then, the throne hall's doors irritatingly croaked open, with echoing footsteps following suit, breaking the silence and atmosphere the princess had grown so fond of.
"I thought I had made it clear that all reports were to be brought to me after the storm passes." She barked, her voice like a rippling gale in spite of her elfin stature, a common illusion she had to break every now and then to subordinates that failed her instruction.
"I have returned princess."
This soothing voice.
This catharsis she felt.
It had to be.
Swiveling the throne away from the giant glass, she turned from her little world and gasped with delight as she quickly raced down the throne steps and into the arms that had bowed before her.
"You've returned Xander!" She exclaimed as she burrowed her face into the knight's chest in a childlike manner that befit her appearance. While the armor got in the way and felt cold against her cheek, it mattered not for the Emblian crown princess. The warmth she had been longing for had returned.
"I'm sorry for not having returned sooner milady." The normally stern knight said, with a warm smile spreading across his face as the girl resumed her childish antics. "While returning from the Gates of Tellius, we received report of a sizeable band of rogues encroaching on our rear guard."
"Was it your retainer's troupe? The masked maniacs or what have you?"
Xander shook his head. "The Masquerade." He corrected her. "And no. Ever since he abandoned us, he and his band of mercenaries always operate far from us. He knows our strength and knows full well it would be suicide to attack us outright in the hit-and-runs he's notorious for."
"Then who were these attackers?"
"We do not know as of yet." Xander explained. "Their colors are unidentifiable and they refuse to speak. Chances are they are Askrian rogues and Emblian defectors. Their methods of attack were viciously similar."
"And what of Bruno?"
He shook his head. "The last time he was seen he was riding off towards the south. None of our scout have been able to intercept his location."
"I'm sure that he'll return like he always has." Veronica then put her small, cold hand on the knight's cheek, a parent would a caress a child's. "You weren't hurt, were you?"
Xander gently rest his armored hand on her own. "Of course not. While General Reinhardt was wounded in the attack, the perpetrators have been swiftly dealt with, save for a lone straggler who managed to flee into the Marsh. Fret not, milady. If our search parties don't get to him, his wounds will."
"Thank the goddess you're alright." Veronica whispered, as if in an act of reassuring herself further.
"I rode on ahead of the convoy to see you before the sun set." Xander stood up from the foyer and took in the darkness that had permeated into the throne room. "Were you planning on spending the rest of your day in here, princess?"
"If it means that I can have you all to myself, then I'll gladly bar all the doors…" Veronica began. "But I'll abstain from doing so. I still remember how much of a scolding I got from you the last time I suggested doing something so unbecoming…"
Xander smiled. "It pleases me to hear that you're readily taking my advice to heart milady."
Veronica paced around the foyer upon light steps for a moment, swallowed in thought.
"You mentioned that Sir Reinhardt was injured while dealing with the brigands, yes?" She asked momentarily before resuming her thoughts.
"Nothing to lose sleep over." Xander replied, nodding. "However, the general may have to refrain from field work to recover fully I'm afraid."
"A ruler must care and look after the well-being of her subjects…" Veronica said aloud, to no one in particular. "That's what you told me…"
"I remember that as clear as day milady. It was after our forces had just returned from the Vaskrheim siege."
"And I still remember that a good bulk of our rider division failed to return." Veronica muttered, her hands rolling into fists with her eyes glued towards the knight. "You almost didn't return."
"Princess."
"All because of that bastard of a lord that chased you down and that blasted tactician of his—"
"Do not concern yourself with what has happened already again, little princess." Xander said firmly, gripping the small girl by her shoulders as a father would when reprimanding his child. "I know how much that mission meant to you and as it did for the late King Viktor. But don't dwell on what has come to pass. Keep your head up and chin high."
She bit her lip.
"Look for what you can do with the now. Concern yourself with those remain and still draw breath, not of the ones who laid down theirs. The living deserve our attention now. We can mourn for whom we have lost when the time comes. Until then, we must keep pressing onward little princess. Only then can we move forward."
Veronica looked up at the stoic knight that had opened up to her the day her father failed to return from the Battle of Vaskrheim. He was the one who delivered the news of her father's death after all. When she had felt lost, Xander was there to set the path for her right again. She gazed into the hardened eyes of a warrior as they softened before hers. Unbeknownst to the girl, her hand came to rest atop his own as they still firmly, yet gently, held her shoulders.
"There's that name again…" Veronica said softly. "Little princess… You would always catch yourself when those words touched your lips. Yet this is the first time you've called me that with full intent."
"Walk by me princess."
Veronica silently agreed as the knight pulled open the hidden door that led outside the throne room. It was a secret her father had shown her while he still sat upon the throne. It led to a stairway that would curl downward to the canals below the castle where a small boat would be ready for a king or a princess to escape the castle if even for a moment, carrying its passengers along the waterway that sprawled along the capital of Embla.
The wind seemed to die down immediately after being greeted by her very presence. The gusts from before were like mere whispers now as the storm calmed yet still brewed. Xander boarded the gondola and held Veronica's hand as she boarded the small, yet lavish, rowboat. The knight quickly took the helm and led the vessel into the calm and quiet waters of the Emblian night. Out here too, Veronica felt at peace, especially in the presence of her trusted advisor.
And perhaps her only true friend.
"Why have you brought me out here, Xander?" She asked, as calm as the waters that whisked past that wooden bow of the boat.
"You've always asked me why I stayed in Zenith. And yet, after all these years, I have refused to give you a proper answer." Xander began, still pushing the boat along with the long staff that it had come with.
Veronica sat silently, the small boat rocking her gently back and forth.
"But perhaps now you deserve to know."
The Emblian princess peered down at the knight's reflection that was poised gallantly upon the waters.
"I once had a great many siblings." He began. "Each unique and special in their own way. Perhaps you've heard of some of them from your studies."
Veronica nodded. "I remember them from the stories you used to tell me. Like the one about your brother who had a bad habit of dressing himself improperly or your sister who was perhaps as terrifying as you are on the battlefield."
He chuckled. "You still remembered after all this time."
Veronica beamed with pride.
"But there were others too." Xander said, his voice turning somber. "Others whose names have been forever lost to history's pages. Names and faces only I know. Names and faces only I will remember. Lives that I will have to carry on my back until my time draws to an end."
"You did mention that your father had many concubines." Veronica added.
He nodded. "For better or for worse, I had grown up surrounded by countless brothers and sisters, some who looked to me with envy. And others whose eyes were like knives that stabbed at me every chance they got."
Veronica said nothing. She had heard something similar from her own elder brother growing up.
How people would never accept him as the rightful heir.
How he nothing but a bastard to the Emblian line.
"But among them, there was someone special." Xander spoke. "Someone who wasn't like the others. Someone who clung to life. Someone who held it desperately between their two feeble hands."
"Was this another one of your half-siblings?"
He shook his head. "She was a fugitive from an enemy kingdom whom we had taken into our own family and raised as our own."
"A fugitive?" Veronica asked, puzzled. "But why would you do such a thing? She was a part of the enemy."
"She was but a mere child when she came to us, numbed by shock and forgetting who she even was." Xander said in response. "She was to be a token of war and nothing more. When we no longer had any need of her, she was to be disposed of like the other children that did not survive. But when I saw her, enveloped in such pity and eyes begging for help, I had to defy my father for the first time in my life."
"What did you do?"
"I raised her and treated her like one of our own." Xander responded. "Ironic, I know, given my circumstances, but I could not abandon her. And soon, my other siblings began to treat her the same way and recognized her as a part of our family which only grew smaller by the day… Little did I know that the little princess I had saved would be the start of everything."
Little princess.
"So why is that you, until now, have not spoken those words?"
Xander shut his eyes and in doing so the boat had crawled to a halt.
"We had come so close… So close to changing Nohr. But that was not to be."
Never had Veronica seen such a distraught look on the usually completely composed knight's face.
"In our final battle," Xander began after a long pause. "She fell victim to blade wielded by the monster my father had become. Without her to wield the sacred blade Yato, all was lost. My siblings did all we could to quell the evil that had consumed our father but to no avail."
"What happened to them?" Veronica asked.
"They stayed behind to guard our escape." Xander quietly said as he resumed his rowing. "They gave their lives to make sure I found a way to save hers. And I tried. I tried everything I could possibly do. Everything in my power to make sure their deaths would not be in vain. From one world to the next. And yet no healer, sage, and scholar could ever rid her of the festering wound that seeped across her body like a virulent poison. Fate had it that no matter what I did, she would die. But in spite of that, I kept searching. For anything. A cure perhaps. Or even something that would ease her suffering. But it was all for naught."
Veronica needn't ask. She knew where this was headed.
"She should have died back in Nohr like the hero she was destined to be… But instead, by my selfishness, she perished in my arms, a shell of her former self. A husk of the little princess I had raised and was unceremoniously buried in a watery grave, like a dog, in a world far from home where her name was lost and meant nothing, and her deeds fell upon deaf ears… I had destroyed the life and legacy of the little princess I swore to protect."
"…"
"After what seemed like an eternity, King Viktor, your father, found me."
Veronica slightly jumped at the sudden mentioning of her father's name. Despite being her father, the man was always beyond her reach. And just when he finally began to open up to her, he never came back home, his body gone like the ashes in the wind along with Veronica's hopes of truly knowing the man whom she called father.
"He offered me a choice. To continue my wanderings into oblivion or serve under him with a blood contract in exchange for the thing I desired most."
"And what was that?" Veronica asked although she already knew the answer.
"To serve under my little princess once more. To make sure that as long as I draw breath she needn't suffer."
Veronica sat quietly as the boat drifted further down the waterway, passing the many buildings that lined the aqueducts.
"But that would go unfulfilled." Xander said abruptly. "The day your father perished at Vaskrheim, I felt myself being thrown again into a pit of despair once more. It was as if I had lost my sister once again."
"You could have left."
Xander gazed at her sadly.
"The contract that bound you to my father broke the day he was killed. And that went for all the heroes he brought under his reign. You could have left like all the others… and I've never asked you this before but why didn't you? Why didn't you leave to see your wish fulfilled elsewhere?"
"Because I saw you."
Veronica felt her voice getting caught up in her throat.
"I seriously had considered leaving Zenith with the contract no longer binding me to this world. I even had arrived at the throne room to give up the sword I had been wielding in Embla's name…" Xander recollected. "But there you were, a mere child, with the weight of the world on your shoulders, as you lay crying alone in the empty throne room with no one but the cold embrace of death to keep you company… a kindred spirit."
Veronica remembered that very day with perfect clarity. The messenger bearing the news of her father's army's annihilation. The death of her father. The passing of the crown to her. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than someone, anyone, to be by her side, to pick up her broken self.
"Just like how it was before, there was no way I could leave you, someone who so desperately sought for a reason to live, behind."
And the man responsible for who she was today stood before her, silently rowing the boat as it gently drifted into the evening air.
"Tell me something Xander." Veronica said, her voice like a whisper.
"Anything milady."
"If I had told you that I could grant your wish, what would you do?"
It was a question that rested on her mind ever since Xander brought up his motive in fighting for her father. It was the same with all the other heroes Embla had brought into her service. They all had a regret they wished to amend and would do anything, even if it meant fighting in a war, to wipe away their sins.
She asked the question with perfect delivery but her heart wavered. What would Xander, the man who was more of a father to her than her real father ever was, say? Would he abandon their relationship and leave? Would he finish the war and depart? Would he leave her behind for someone more important to him? In all the time that Veronica knew the knight, she knew that if he had set his mind on something, he wouldn't hesitate in the slightest in carrying his will out. This was one of the reasons as to why he had gained notoriety both in Embla and Askr. In the light of such news, what would he do?
Xander simply smiled.
"But little princess, you already have."
Veronica's eyes widened with shock as she met Xander's gaze that looked upon her tenderly. It took everything inside the Emblian princess to not leap up and wrap her arms around the knight.
"What has happened has already come to pass." Xander said, quoting his advice to her from before. "Let those who sleep lie in their slumber."
He approached her as much as he could on their small boat and unsheathed his sword. Bending his knee and planting the sword before him he said, "Today, I wish to reaffirm my service to Embla and pledge my blade and my life to you, little princess, once more under a blood contract… That is, if you would have me."
Veronica knew the incantations by heart, she had seen it countless times. She reached out and rested her hand atop the knight's gold and black blade.
"And I Princess Veronica of Embla offer you a place by my side, till the end of time, till the end of you and I."
A soft light radiated and Xander's sword hummed with a mysterious energy as their contract had been sealed. Veronica felt a surge of energy rush through her veins as her body began to pulsate now that the two had become truly one. This was her first blood contract.
And the only one she would ever need.
"My blade and spirit will forever be yours, little princess."
Veronica would have embrace him if she didn't feel so unsteady on her feet. She had seen the ritual performed by her father countless times before but to do it herself was an entirely different manner.
"Before, back in the throne room," Veronica said, as she unsteadily sat back down while Xander commandeered the boat once more. "You advised me to care for the well-being of my people."
"That I did, milady."
"I think I'll take that advice to heart as well." Veronica said, with a soft smile on her face. She stretched her hand outward into the evening air. "Take me to the men who returned from the field. I shall personally greet them all."
"And that would be most pleasing to them." Xander said, an approving smile spread across his face. "The soldiers will need the boost in morale."
"How long till we arrive?" Veronica asked.
"We're already here."
Like magic, Veronica saw that the boat had indeed arrived at the pier where the soldiers would be eventually stationed at. She saw that a sizeable division of the force had arrived already and set up camp. When the soldiers saw her, they greeted her with warmly from the shore.
Veronica tugged on the knight's arm as he readied the boat for its anchoring.
"What is it milady?"
"I'm still learning about… all this Xander." Veronica said, her face glowing red. "There is still so much I do not know and so much I have yet to learn. If you could continue advising and teaching me… I…"
She wrapped her hands around his arms.
The knight led her by the arm.
"It would be my honor, little princess."
(A/N): I've always wanted to do a chapter for the Emblian side for the longest time, especially a chapter on Veronica as a character. I want to craft her beyond what IS has given us, beyond the simple motives of "oh no, I'm so lonely" because the girl really has potential. Ever since I started writing, I wanted to explore more about them and flesh them out, not as simple villains, but as characters that occupy the same world as the heroes we are so familiar with. IS has been progressing their story quite a bit but I want to take mine in a different direction so if you ever see something that directly conflicts with what we know in-game, sorry.
But that's why I have decided to name this chapter a Xenologue instead of the more traditional chapter layout. Since Fire Emblem loves throwing that word around a lot as of late, I thought I would try my hand at it. Hope it works.
Anyway, thanks for reading.
Cheers.