Askr's Rock

"Alfonse?"

Alfonse managed to quiet himself when Sharena's voice poured through the door he sat against, hoping that she would just leave him be. Her opinions of Father were better; her optimism because she was treated better.

His own experience wasn't the same. Father was hard on him. He kept expecting better than Alfonse could do, and was disappointed when the prince couldn't deliver. Alfonse couldn't even remember a time he'd been told he was loved, no matter how many times Mother said he loved Alfonse with all of his heart.

The note in his hand told him that wasn't true. He wasn't commemorated for his efforts, nor the sudden pattern of success that the Order or Heroes was achieving in the war against Embla. His Father just said he wanted more results.

Damn him. Damn him and his results. They were trying. Kiran couldn't Summon an entire army in a day, nor could the Order win the war in a week.

Yet Father didn't care. And that hurt so much.

A sound got his attention. A figure leapt from a connecting balcony to his own, and if it were an assassin, Alfonse probably couldn't manage to stop them. The window opened, and in stepped the one person he hoped wouldn't find him like this.

Kiran looked at Alfonse with those hard brown eyes, ones that Alfonse had seen so many sides of. The jokes and sarcastic humor were nowhere to be found in those brown orbs. For a moment, he saw Father's eyes in the boy ripped from his own life for them, but that belief was squashed when he saw something Father had never given him.

Sympathy.

Kiran sat down beside him, not a single word uttered, threw an arm over Alfonse's shoulders, and let Alfonse break down.

"I'm so-sorry…"

"Don't be."

"I dragged you into our war."

"Seriously don't care about that."

"N… now I can't even be someone to rely on. I'm weak."

Kiran looked at him, a patient look on his face as a brown glove came up to wipe Alfonse's tears.

"No one is perfect, Alfonse. We all have chinks in our armor that we don't want others to see. Sometimes our emotions seep out and we say things we don't really mean. Kind of like your old man."

Alfonse choked. Kiran knew. Kiran always seemed to know what was wrong.

"He loves you, no doubt about it. He's probably just hard on you because he wants to see you be better than he ever could've been."

Alfonse understood that. It just never seemed to come to mind when it was supposed to, and judging by how Kiran's embrace became tighter, the Summoner understood it as well.

"Just cry it out, man. You're my other half, remember? I'll be here to dry your tears and to make fun of your runny nose when you're done."

So Alfonse did. He screamed and cried, whimpered and beat his hands into Kiran's chest, and his other half took it without the slightest complaint. He just sat beside, a supportive smile and a warm embrace to make all of the dark thoughts blow away like leaves in the wind.

Like that stupid branch he clung to, remembering holding his father's hand and clearing away a path of imaginary monsters.

Days later, Kiran learned of the story from Sharena. The tree that was planted beside Alfonse's window was of the same wood, one small branch, one that could easily fit into the hand of a child, missing from its limbs. Alfonse smiled and found himself right at the side of Kiran's antics later, happily partaking in his other half's agenda.

Anna had secluded herself, leaving everyone under the impression that she was Commandering something so they'd leave her alone.

Instead, she was looking over the letter from her numerous sisters with tears running down her face. The wads of paper and ink around her were because she couldn't bring herself to look over their happy, successful lives anymore. Not when she was stuck barely holding herself together.

"Damn it," Anna muttered to herself, tears falling down without any sign of stopping. She look at all those happy memories, shoved into her face by her sisters who didn't understand just how much she wanted to be like them. Anna's were all mirrors of one another, yet were so inherently different that they could be told apart just by how they worked. At least, all of them but her.

It came with having dozens of sisters; their parents were bound to get them mixed up every once in a while. Yet, it always seemed to be her.

She wasn't crying because of the letters. She was crying because they were all for each other, not a one of them for Askr's resident Commander. No one had bothered to check in on her. Not mom or dad. Not her twin, or her twin, or her twin, or…

Or her twin, as in born together twin. And that hurt the most.

"Hey, Anna," came Kiran's voice as he stepped into the room, "how much are you going to let me get away with if Las, Hector and I fooled with sulfu-" he stopped, registering her red, tears eyes and she just wished he'd leave. He didn't.

"...what happened?"

She clenched her fists and resisted the urge to punch a hole in the table. Then sit down and cry. Then hit Kiran. Then cry again.

"Get out of here, Kiran. Don't make me yell at you."

His hand crashed into the table, and Anna jumped, eyes shooting up to see him looking at her with stern eyes. His face softened, and he sat down on the command table, brown eyes centered on her and her alone.

"I'm not leaving until those tears streaming down your face are gone and you're berating me for using all of the Orbs on a whim," he said in the same voice that would constantly get on her nerves, yet now just felt like a refreshing drink of water. One she couldn't willingly swallow.

"Why do you care so much? You and I aren't really what people think of when they imagine friends."

Kiran looked at her and his gaze dropped as he threw himself onto one of the seats, pulling his hood off to glare at the ceiling.

His words weren't the comforting sort. Not even close.

"I shouldn't care. You and I don't work well together, and we're at each other's throats on a constant basis. I can count the amount of conversations we've willingly initiated with each other on one hand."

Anna bit her lip. It was her fault. She'd been relatively rude to Kiran when she realized their personalities didn't mesh well, always forgetting it wasn't his choice to be dragged into their lives.

Kiran poked her in the cheek, and he met her with a warm smile.

"Yet I don't care. I see someone that's hurting, someone good that doesn't deserve to cry in a closed room until they pull themselves together to create this great façade of a Commander of Askr. I see a girl with a lot of sisters and even more problems that she thinks she can handle all on her own."

Anna choked on her tears. She looked to Kiran hesitantly, and he had a face that just screamed that he understood. The grin came back, but it was warm. Sympathetic, but no pity. He just seemed to know she didn't need to be pitied.

"Why wouldn't I care?"

She didn't know what to say to that, yet it seemed like she didn't have to. Kiran prattled on about different topics, playing with her command table and making a general nuisance of himself, as he usually did. The thing that kept her from keeping him far, far away from any of her things was the fact that it worked. Two hours was what it took, and those dark thoughts were dispelled by her white robed, idiotic Summoner.

He didn't ask about what made her so sad. He seemed to know his boundaries, and didn't try and push for an answer. She didn't know whether that was on purpose or accident, but it helped so much.

She was a little easier on him when he, Laslow, and Hector accidentally blew up an entire room. He bore the punishment with a smile.

It was her job to protect Kiran in battle.

Sharena had taken it gladly. There'd been a close call where an Emblian assassin had almost killed him, and Linde had barely managed to blast the enemy to smithereens before Kiran's blood soaked the grass. It was then everyone decided that Kiran needed a guardian in battle; someone to save him while Kiran focused on saving everyone in battle. Sharena took it, not only to protect her friend, but to make up for dragging him into their war.

She watched in awe as Kiran controlled the battlefield. He muttered to himself something about a "Weapon Triangle" constantly, but was a strange kind of serious as he requested units to move. Sometimes she wouldn't understand: why would you put Selena in the range of that Armored Axe but Caeda just out of range for the Mage?

She didn't understand and didn't try to. Tacticians were weird.

"Where's the Sword Infantry?"

Kiran's confused voice poked through her mulling, and she glanced up to see him looking at Feh. Feh was perched on the Summoner's weapon, Breidablik, a look in its eyes that seemed to bring him concern. She moved forwards and Kiran caught to movement, quickly explaining.

"Robin reported in with Feh. The guy he was going after suddenly vanished and he has no clue where he went."

She didn't know tactics, but she knew what it meant when an enemy suddenly vanished. She bit her lip and looked at Kiran to gauge his reaction, and he seemed to be just as uncertain as she about the situation.

"We should move then. This is a problem."

Kiran's eyes hardened with responsibility. He looked back to Feh, the owl strangely still, as if waiting for orders.

"Tell them to converge past that mountain range. And Feh, get them to pay attention to any sign of an assassin chilling anywhere."

The owl nodded and took off into the air, and Kiran holstered Breidablik at his hip, nodding his head in the direction of the mountain range. The two walked quietly together, weapons stowed to hasten their speed, yet still were prepared in case something happened.

At least, until the missing enemy loudly burst through the foliage behind them, Sharena having no time to react and unfurl Fensalir. The blade tore down far too fast for her to escape.

"Sharena!"

Kiran tackled her out of the way, and she could only register the splash of blood that erupted from her friend's back for a second before the ground sprawled her across the grass. Her brain was just barely able to comprehend what had happened when Fensalir was wrenched from her weak grasp by a grimacing Kiran, who whirled around and tried to smash the spear into the chest of the Emblian. It was deflected by the man's shield, and Sharena scampered to return to her feet to protect Kiran.

Sharena screamed for Kiran as he was blindsided by the flat of the blade, knocking him right off of his feet. The Askrian Princess rushed at the man, hoping that even without her spear she could neutralize the threat. She realized far too late that he was already swinging at her.

It was caught, or rather prevented from slaying her, by a thick brown glove, blood pouring out of the gash. Kiran didn't even seem to react to the blade lodged in his hand, instead taking the opening before the man could guard to ram Fensalir through the man's chest, puncturing through his chestplate, and judging by the location, straight through his heart.

The man looked in horror at the spear protruding from his chest, and Kiran rammed it further through his chest with a snarl until it protruded out of the back, then ripped it back out with a flourish, panting.

Kiran was pale, shaking and sullen-eyed. He still turned to see her, looking her up and down to ensure she was alright, when Sharena only thought that he needed someone to look him over instead. She stiffened when he grabbed her in a hug, trying to ignore the blood pooling across his back.

Kiran still smiled.

"I've got you," he said. Sharena promised on everything she held dear, she'd never let something like that happen again, to protect her dumb, stupid, brother figure.

"I've got you," she mumbled right back.

Kiran woke up sobbing.

He'd been plagued by nightmares ever since he'd killed the Emblian Swordmaster. Blood soaked his hands every night in his dreams, and no matter how hard he tried to ignore them, he'd wake up crying his heart out. It was normal by now, yet his hands still shook thinking about the life seeping out of the man, the look of horror and realization that dawned on his face when death took him.

He took deep breaths to still his tears and choked sobs, trying to stem the downpour with his hands and failing miserably. He just wanted something to go right for once. So he could forget the painful memories under hundreds of happy ones.

Yet this was reality, or whatever strange fictitious version of it Askr resided in. That wasn't how things worked. Sharena was alive, thank God, and if he had to do it again, he'd deal with the nightmares and lost sleep billions of times over to make sure she and anyone in Askr was okay. It didn't mean it wasn't hell to deal with.

He just barely managed to wonder how loud his crying was when the door opened, and a familiar figure stepped in, armor replaced for pajamas, the normally stoic expression warped to one of concern.

"A-Al…?"

Alfonse just smiled sympathetically. He sat down beside Kiran, hand on the Earthling's shoulder.

"Don't worry," he said softly, "we'll chase the nightmares away."

Kiran swallowed through a tongue of cotton.

"We'll?"

Alfonse nodded to the door, and Kiran followed the motion with tired eyes. Sharena and Anna were standing in the doorway, a tear-filled look on the Princess's face and a patient smile on the Commander's. Alfonse shared the smile with them as well, and the three ended up sat right beside Kiran.

"It's only right that we return your assistance," Anna said with a smile. He wrapped her in a hug, and she hugged him back, rubbing his hair as he sobbed into her shoulder, the image of that long, terrifying experience washed away by the comforting hold of the people who he trusted, and trusted him in return.

The four slept well that night.

Chrom found them all tucked away in Kiran's room. When the Exalt had found them, he could only seem to see the four as some of the Future Children, huddled together through the night and waking up in the presence of others who understood.

He looked out the window, the immense storm outside so thick that he could barely see the dueling fields, and smiled. He would let them sleep for a while longer.