Sakura deals with a moral dilemma. Corrin officiates a race. Kana's hunt for treasure goes awry.
It wasn't too much of a stretch to say that the only quality time Sakura got to spend with her siblings was when they came into the infirmary with sprained wrists or broken fingers. Every so often, they'd get together to share a lunch or a dinner, but passing greetings and rushed catchups before or after war councils were all she could really count on. And Corrin might as well have been a figment of her imagination for the little she saw of her.
I only see her when things are bad, Sakura thought as she rose onto her tiptoes to reach into the very back of the medicine cabinet. She couldn't see anything, but she rooted her fingers against all the vials and bottle until she traced pitted glass. Worming her fingers around the neck so that she didn't send the bottle clattering onto its side, Sakura pulled the glass towards her, hoping that she wouldn't accidentally bring the whole shelf down on her head.
She read the label and then sighed.
Wrong one. Again.
"Do you need help, Sakura?"
"No! You stay put!" she called back, reaching into the dark depths of the cabinet again. Thankfully, she located another pitted bottle with relative ease and, when she'd pulled it free, found it was the right one.
She turned around to her brother's pouting face.
"You're bossy," he said. She scowled at him. Ryoma laughed. Then, she grabbed his hand, holding his arm flat in the air, and then sprinkled the contents of the bottle over the bloodied wound on his bicep. He stopped laughing.
Instead, he grimaced as the skin began to singe and hiss around the cut until all the blood and grime was gone from the gash.
"You really need to be more careful," Sakura said as she tightened the cap back onto the bottle.
"I am careful. Corrin just hits like frenzied pegasus."
Then maybe you should stop sparring with her, Sakura thought as she watched him twist his arm around to get a better look at the wound. Then, she took her time in returning the bottle and even longer to retrieve her staff from the confines of her satchel. Ryoma said nothing as she milled about, though she wasn't surprised. Lapses of silence were expected whenever it was just her and Ryoma, but she wished that they weren't.
There was a dark knowledge that kept her up into the dawn of the morning and she knew Ryoma could alleviate her strife in a single sentence with that wise, gentle way of his. But Corrin had sworn her to secrecy and, more than that, she was terrified of implicating him within the treacherous web that Corrin had spun. There was no telling Ryoma without condemning Corrin in his eyes or, worse, the eyes of the entire army.
But he's in danger, Sakura thought.
Each day, Corrin tempted fate, sending out parties to investigate the land and establish footholds in the desolate country. Ryoma led many of them and, each night, Sakura dreamt of her brother, wreathed in purple smoke and staring with eyes that were empty and endless, following her with shuffling feet and bloodied hands.
She knew next to nothing about possession as there was no greater sin than overwhelming the will of another, but she knew that the scout had been possessed, not driven mad.
Mad women can't rip free of their chains like paper, Sakura thought, and they don't burst apart into streamers of flesh when stabbed.
But Corrin had lied and no one but Sakura, Leo, and Silas knew the true danger facing them.
Sakura looked at her brother and watched his amber eyes, the very same shade as hers, flick back and forth as he read the inventory list on the wall across from him. She watched him and dread coiled in her stomach.
Constantly, she was terrified of losing her family, but she was scared of losing Ryoma most of all. As her brother moved his attention from the inventory to the shadows moving behind the curtains beside him, she thought of the precious minutes before the war council had gathered a week prior, when the lie had been formulated and she had done nothing to stop it.
"Might I suggest," Leo began, drawing Corrin to a halt and the rest of them along with her. Sakura stood beside Silas, feeling more and more like she was out of place and unnecessary.
"You give me time to examine the body before you reveal the gravity of the situation. Otherwise, you risk undue hysteria without the answers to quell it."
Sakura's heart fell into her belly as she watched her sister mull it over, turning the idea between her teeth by chewing on her lip.
"How long would you need?" Corrin asked.
Banners of warning waved in Sakura's mind. A lie would help no one.
"Only a few weeks, a month at most. I'll also need access to the infirmary's supply to—"
"You can't be serious."
Sakura sucked in a gulp of air through her straining mouth as Silas strong-armed his way into the discussion. Leo stiffened and, in the waning starlight, his shadow stretched long behind him.
"Excuse me?"
Silas turned to Corrin, ignoring Leo's affronted ego, and argued, "They deserve to know everything you know, even if it isn't much. You can't keep them in the dark on something like this."
Corrin gave no immediate response and Leo scoffed. He was so tall he blocked out the moon. Sakura feared he would keep growing until he stood like a colossus above the world.
"The dark is the best place for those who default to fear before thought."
Sakura watched color saturate Silas' face as his hands clenched. He shouted, "Fear is the natural reaction to something as monstrous as what just happened! Not sick fascination!"
Sakura had spent little time in Leo's presence, finding him too much like the oily politicians that had besieged Mikoto throughout her entire interim rule, but she had never seen him in the sinister light that Takumi did. Now, as he sneered in cruel disdain, she understood her brother's apprehension completely. She watched him turn to Corrin with lazy bravado and she wished for her brother to manifest in a flurry of unkempt hair and anger to stop him from capturing them all within the palm of his hand.
"Best remind your toy of his place before I do."
"Enough!"
And Sakura had thought Corrin's "enough" had meant that she would never comply with Leo's request.
But she did.
Sakura looked at her brother and she wanted to ask him, You wouldn't hide the truth, would you?
But she knew it wasn't an easy answer. And she knew Corrin was suffering for it. Each day, the shadows beneath her eyes grew until they haunted the corners of her smiles.
A chorus of moans rose up from the other side of the infirmary followed by a long, unrestrained shriek and then silence. Sakura resigned her moral quandary for another day. The strength had left her to question her brother about it.
"What was that all about?" Ryoma asked, quietly so that the injured party could not hear.
Sakura pulled her staff free, tracing the etched blessings in the wood, before she answered.
"Bone resetting."
Ryoma's face soured. He rubbed at his wrist and Sakura could only assume that he thought of the summer he'd tried his hand at kinshi riding. She had only been six, but, even now, she could still remember how he'd howled when the priestesses had held him down and twisted his mangled wrist into something salvageable. The bone had healed strong and straight, but she knew he still gave kinshis a wide berth.
"Poor dastard," Ryoma muttered, shaking his head.
"If you're not careful, that could be you," Sakura said quietly.
Ryoma huffed, crossing his arms.
"You sound like Mikoto."
That's not a bad thing, Sakura thought, hiding her smile behind the headpiece of her staff. Then, it took only a murmured chant and a few seconds to heal his wound. He hissed as the blessing knit his skin together and, when it was over, he poked at the bright, pink strip of flesh like he always did.
What a baby.
Ryoma stood to leave before she'd even lowered her staff.
"Thank you," he said as he wrapped her in a brief, one armed hug. She hugged him back as fiercely as she could manage, asking him with the squeeze of her arms to stay a bit longer, but he peeled away.
"I'll see you at dinner," he announced in parting.
All that means is you'll wave at me from the other side of the mess hall, Sakura thought as she waved a feeble goodbye to his retreating form.
When the tent flaps fluttered closed behind him, she drew the curtains around the cot he'd previously occupied and tried not to cry.
Corrin heard the soft chattering of passing conversation just as her fist emerged from the belly of a straw dummy. As she withdrew her arm, brushing it clean of bits of straw, she listened to the voices with mild curiosity, trying to place their cadence and tambour.
She hadn't meant to disfigure the dummy, but frustration had blurred her rationality into a torrent of unfeeling physicality. Nothing was going the way it was meant to.
Everything sucks, Corrin thought as stared at the mess she'd made. The dummy would need to be restuffed and resewn, but both were beyond her ability. Once, at Gunter's insistence, she'd tried sewing, but she stuck herself with the needle too many times for it to have become a beloved hobby. Jakob had a natural gift for sewing so all her tattered clothes were pawned off on him to fix, despite his protests that she would be better suited training with a needle than a sword.
Her machinations to con Jakob into fixing the dummy evaporated upon the sound of the gate into the arena being jangled. She whirled towards the entrance to see a small gathering on the other side.
In the dusk, she had to squint, but there was no mistaking the Crown Prince of Nohr and his youngest sister for anyone else.
How do I even begin to explain this? she thought, glancing at the misshapen dummy and knowing anyone that saw it would think she'd come unhinged, just as Elise announced, "Well, we can't get in so I guess we'll just have to…"
Her high voice trailed off as a third party, who Corrin could only assume was Peri based on the corkscrewing pigtails coming off of their skull, leapt at the gate and then vaulted down on the other side. Only some thirty minutes prior, Corrin had done the exact same thing.
Now, the gate lay open and Corrin swallowed her scowl as they came through. For a brief moment, she considered scaling the wall and escaping before they could solidify her identity but then Elise shrieked, "Corrin!"
She drew the final syllable long and drooping as she rocketed across the arena in a leaping gait. Her blonde pigtails streamed behind her, bouncing and twirling in the wind. Corrin braced for impact.
Elise caught her around the waist, slamming her face against the soft of her belly and then wrapping her wiry arms around her with the strength of twenty boa constrictors.
"Hi Elise," Corrin said with a wheeze as the girl's hug pinched her ribs together. Elise snuggled into her side and chirped, "You're so strong now! You didn't even flinch!"
Corrin had no response. Elise continued to strangle her with love. Thankfully, she wasn't nearly as strong as Camilla so Corrin felt confident that she would escape the encounter alive. When Camilla captured her in a hug, her fate was never so certain.
The others approached and Corrin saw that Elise had brought both her retainers while Xander had only brought Peri. Despite this new information, Corrin couldn't fathom why they'd decided to make the trek to the arena against the night and the cold. She offered a feeble wave. Effie returned it. Arthur saluted. Peri ignored her. Xander nodded and then said, "Elise, let her breathe."
Imparting one final squeeze, Elise released her. Corrin sucked in a gulp of air and the night chilled her lungs.
It's getting colder, she thought.
Her overcoat lay in a heap against the wall, but she hesitated in retrieving it and giving them all an unadulterated view of the mangled dummy behind her. She brought her hands hard and fast over her arms and then asked, more of Elise than of Xander, "What're you doing here?"
Elise got out a syllable of explanation before Arthur cut in, excitedly announcing, "Lady Elise has challenged Lord Xander to a duel!"
Corrin hid her surprised laugh behind a rasping cough. Elise whirled on her retainer with a glare and huffed, "Arthur! I told you it wasn't a duel! Why do you keep saying that?"
"Apologies," Arthur muttered, hanging his head low. Beside him, Effie rolled her eyes and snorted. Elise turned back to Corrin and her expression perked back up into a smile as she announced, "It's a race."
Corrin coughed into her fist to stop from laughing again. She glanced at Xander, but he was staring past her. She stiffened as his brow furrowed and his gaze roved up to meet hers. She forced a smile, but thought, Shit.
"I know what you're thinking," Elise said, pointing at Corrin, "that Xander's so much bigger and has an unfair advantage, but all that muscle just weighs him down and I'm gonna win easy."
Sequestering her unease to the periphery of her thoughts, Corrin crossed her arms and said, "You seem pretty sure of yourself."
"And I'm not the only one! Camilla thinks so too! And… wait! What's Peri doing?" Elise interrupted. She pointed at Peri as the woman stalked off to the track encircling the arena.
"She better not be helping you cheat!" Elise said to Xander and then she ran off to confront Peri.
Arthur and Effie chased after her, Arthur shouting, "Villain!" and leaving Corrin alone with Xander.
The cold coupled with the quiet assailed her nerves so she retrieved her overcoat if only to force him to say something, anything, and give her a chance to defend herself in light of the ravaged dummy and the implications it held. As she slid her arms into the bundled fabric of her coat, cringing at the chill that had taken hold of the fabric, he announced, "She's stalling."
Corrin followed his gaze and found Elise brandishing a large pebble aloft, shouting, "Aha!"
A shouting match between Arthur and Peri erupted, Arthur accusing Peri of boobytrapping the route and Peri calling Arthur an idiot, as Elise looked on with a satisfied smile. Corrin shook her head.
"This whole thing is ridiculous," she said. "How did she even convince you to do this?"
"If she loses, she has to start showing up to her training."
For as long as Corrin had known Elise, the girl had never once participated in any sort of training despite her siblings' attempts to convince her otherwise. Sometimes, she would agree to run of few laps or do a few crunches, but then could never be found when the time came to own up to her agreement. There was a time when Elise had been persuaded to take up dancing, but quit soon after discovering that her siblings considered it a suitable substitution for her formal training.
"And you think she'll actually start showing up?"
"Not at all, but I have to try."
Corrin smiled and thought, It's too easy to forget he cares for more than military offenses and politics.
She watched as Effie tried to break up Arthur and Peri's squabble, but neither seemed willing to budge in their staunch defense of their respective royals. Elise stood free of the debate, throwing the pebble up and then catching it before it could plummet to the ground.
"What does she get if she wins?"
Xander sighed.
"She styles my hair."
The image of him with pigtails identical to Elise's was too much and she laughed. At his unamused expression, she sobered, commenting, "That's a steep price."
He shrugged.
"I'm not concerned. She's completely incompetent when it comes to anything exhaustive."
"Worse than Leo?"
Xander nodded. Corrin whistled low.
"I didn't think that was possible," she said. "Leo gets winded if he stands in the lunch line too long."
He laughed and she was surprised at the sound of it, but enjoyed hearing it. When they'd been younger, she'd been in such awe of him that the possibility of casual banter never seemed possible. They had been close, but she had never truly known him.
Once, her every interaction with him had been borne from an anxiety to impress him that had gripped her whenever he came to visit the Northern Fortress. It was better to simply exist and to be herself than to conform to whatever disillusioned idea she believed would dazzle him.
"Leo's lazy, but capable," he said. "Elise is simply unwilling."
Then, he breathed into his hands as he rubbed them together. His breath misted in the cold air and cast him in a thin haze. He caught her eye and she shifted as naturally as she could manage to stare up at the icy stars instead. She stuck her hands into the warmth of her armpits and loosed her own puff of crystalline breath. The night was harsh against her exposed skin, but her blood sang in gentle content and kept her from freezing.
Peri had fallen silent, but Arthur and Effie had begun to bicker. Corrin wasn't sure what exactly had started their argument, but she was certain Elise was responsible. She turned to Xander, intending to ask him the whereabouts of his other two siblings, but he spoke before she got the chance.
"How are you doing? I know things have been difficult."
Understatement of the century, she thought as she brought her hands out to rub at her arms. The cold began to sweep through the layers.
"I'm doing alright," she said, forcing her mouth into as nonchalant a smile as she could muster.
"The disemboweled dummy says otherwise."
Her smile dipped, but she pressed her lips tight together to keep it from slipping completely.
"Well, I'm alright now."
Across the arena, Elise had joined the fray, casting her honeyed voice against the anger she'd stoked, but Xander spoke over his sister's echo.
"There are better ways to get your frustration out that don't involve the murder of innocent dummies."
She scowled. The conversation hadn't gone where she'd expected, but the insinuation was still unappreciated. She rolled her eyes.
"Please, regale me with your healthy coping mechanisms."
He laughed and her annoyance began to ebb.
"I've heard quiet meditation does wonders for frustration."
She was unable to even imagine him sitting cross-legged and contemplative the way she'd seen Azura do thousands of times, but a goofiness permeated her thoughts and she smiled despite herself.
"And where did Camilla read that?"
Xander shrugged.
"Some self-help periodical presumably. She's been trying to force yoga on me for the past few months."
Corrin laughed, admitted, "Hinoka forced me into an impromptu yoga session once."
He didn't prompt her to elaborate, but he offered his undivided attention, shifting his gaze completely away from Elise's escapades. In the brief moment before she shared her yoga experience, Corrin noticed he seemed more at ease than she had seen him in years. There was no pinch between his brows or tightness to his shoulders and she wondered if the change was simply a coincidence or an indicator towards their burgeoning friendship.
They had been talking more frequently and more easily and she no longer felt that he wanted to rip her head off during war council, but she didn't know if that meant they were friends.
At the very least, it means we're not going to kill each other, she thought as she announced, "I lost my balance, fell over, and hit my head in the first five minutes."
"Sounds about right."
She glared at him and he offered a smirk instead of soothing the offense. Something small and silvery quickened in her pulse so she cast her gaze onto the hard ground and, for the first time, relished the frigid, harsh wind on her face.
"Xander! Are we going to do this or are you too scared you won't look any good in pigtails?" Elise shouted as she drew near, followed closely by the other three. Effie's arms were laden with an assortment of pebbles and twigs of various sizes.
"Try not to be too disappointed when you lose," Xander said, heading for the track with Peri in tow. Elise scrunched her mouth up into a sneer in his wake and then turned to Corrin with a whiplash grin, saying, "Can you call the race? Peri wanted to do it, but she'll say Xander won even if he didn't."
"Sure," Corrin agreed with a shrug. Elise began to move, but then she fell still, turning back towards Corrin with a sharp look.
"Are things alright with Silas?" Elise asked suddenly.
"Uh, yeah," Corrin said, blindsided by the question. Elise clapped her hands together and then chirped, "Okay, good!"
She began to turn towards the track, clearly intending to line up beside her brother, but Corrin asked, "Wait, why do you ask?"
The younger girl stilled.
"Well…"
Elise looked over her shoulders and then said, "Don't tell him I told you this, but Xander wanted me to ask you about it. He overheard something that worried him, I think."
Corrin frowned. She brought her hands out from beneath her armpits and then crossed her arms, pressing them tight against her chest.
"What was it?"
Elise scuffed her toe against the ground. Her words came reluctantly, but she infused each with a dose of enthusiasm in such a way that she sounded overly excited about the revelation.
"Well, I guess Silas was talking to another solider when Xander went to go check on the perimeter or whatever it is he does and he heard Silas say something about you having changed a lot and that he was kinda worried about it."
Corrin felt like she'd been punched in the chest. Elise was quick to add, "But I'm sure it was nothing! He was probably just trying to act tough!"
Then, Elise ran off to join her brother. Arthur went with her, trailing merrily behind. Effie stayed and, though Corrin could feel her heavy gaze between her shoulders, said nothing.
Arthur and Peri began to count down simultaneously, but Corrin didn't watch the siblings begin their race. The dummy, laying dejected and deformed, had caught her attention. She became lost in its featureless face.
"You can't lie to their faces and still expect their trust," Silas had told her after the fateful war council the week before. He had gone an entire day without speaking to her afterwards, but he'd eventually come around and she'd begged for his forgiveness at the same time he begged for hers. She had thought everything that had been broken had been fixed between them, but that didn't seem to be the case.
Stress and guilt and frustration, both new and old alike, had sent her out into the unforgiving cold, but she'd beaten them back as she'd rained blow upon blow onto the dummy until it permanently retained her fury. Now, they threatened to devour her again, holding her thoughts and her breaths hostage as the ramifications of every decision she'd ever made since the outbreak of the war hit her at once.
Fresh guilt burbled in her lungs for the scout she'd named a traitor instead of a victim. Leo still had yet to uncover anything beyond the fact that the scout had been possessed and, the longer he took, the more impossible revealing the truth seemed.
Peri began to cheer, breaking the still, and Corrin whipped her attention towards the sound. Xander stood in the same spot he had only a few minutes before. Elise flagged behind, huffing and promising murder with her eyes.
They came to her side soon after, Elise calling Xander a cheater and Xander calling Elise a sore loser, but she no longer had the heart to entertain their antics.
"I need to get to bed," she said to them, taking her leave as they offered meager goodbyes. She looked through the concern on their faces.
As she walked through the gate, she heard Elise exclaim, "Wow! She really messed up this dummy!"
Her hands felt like ash and she knew sleep would be an elusive dream at best that night.
It was so cold out that the snot froze the second it left Kana's nose. It clung to the skin and, when he rubbed at it, it broke off in little flakes, taking flecks of skin with it and leaving the area around his nostrils red and raw and very, very painful.
Kana didn't want to be out in the cold. In fact, he hated the cold because it did things like freeze his snot and make his face hurt, but he had some very important sneaking around to do that could only be done in the dark, cold night because Siegbert was in bed and was a really heavy sleeper which meant that Kana could sneak out without getting scolded so long as Siegbert didn't wake up before he returned which had happened once before, but that was because Kana had lost track of time chasing fireflies and that would never happen now because it was cold and all the fireflies were dead.
Rounding a corner, something small and glittering caught his eye. Kana darted towards it and then snatched it up into his little greedy hands, but it was only a black button and he had a thousand like it piled in a teeny mountain beneath his bed back home. Besides, it wasn't even a moderately interesting button like the cracked red one he'd found last week or the one that he was pretty positive was made out of bone.
Still, Kana held it up to his eye and tried to make a case for it, but there was simply nothing interesting about it so he tossed it over his shoulder and enjoyed the plink of it bouncing off the side of the market stall.
Sighing, Kana stood up and looked at the empty path around him. The stalls were all boarded up for the night and they looked sad and lonely beneath the thin moon. They reminded him of the markets back home but those had taken up an entire city block and there had been everything from elixirs to puppets and, once, his papa had taken him to the markets to buy a gift for his mama's birthday and his papa had tried to convince him to get his mama something like jewelry but he'd made friends with an old man that whittled ducks out of wood instead and tried to whittle a duck for his mama and it'd turned out more like a big booger than a duck but he'd given it to his mama anyway and she loved it more than all her other gifts and kept it on the nightstand by her bed and then the next year he bought her wind chimes from a Hoshidian woman, but his papa didn't take him that year because his papa was really busy and he'd had to go shopping with Jakob and it was the worst day of his life because Jakob was a jerk.
The wind blew really hard and Kana drew his jacket tighter around his little body. The dragonstone Corrin had given him was warm against his chest. He wondered if his mama had one too because he'd never seen her wearing one, at least, not like the one he had which was round and smooth and kind of reminded him of a bubble that had been frozen and then stuck on a chain and he'd only ever heard about his mama being a dragon from the history lessons he had to take about the war his mama and papa had fought and all the crazy cool things his mama had done but didn't like to talk about because her brothers had died because of the war and he wondered if maybe that was why she didn't wear a dragonstone.
He liked his dragonstone a lot though and, even though he didn't really understand what being a dragon meant and had been really scared and upset when he'd woken up and they told him he had torn apart the woods and hurt Corrin, he was happy to have hair like his mama's because he'd never liked his brown hair because nobody in his family had brown hair and now he looked just like his mama except young and a boy! The only thing that was bad was that he was pretty sure the whole thing had stressed Siegbert out so much that he cried and that made Kana feel really, really bad. The last thing he wanted was to stress Siegbert out that much, especially since it wasn't even something he'd meant to do! He had just gotten mad and now he was a dragon!
It was weird and sometimes, if he thought about it too much, he got a really sick feeling down in his stomach because he knew his mama was going to be really worried and he didn't think his papa would be too happy either with him being able to wreak more havoc and he really hated upsetting everyone and just wanted to make everyone happy instead.
Now, Kana yawned, stretching his arms up over his head and towards the sky. It was getting pretty late. He hadn't found anything remotely interesting to add to his stash. Usually, his best finds were strewn about the market stalls, but, tonight, there was nothing but straw, forgotten buttons, and a bit of ragged cloth.
"This sucks," Kana muttered, kicking at the path. His kick sent dirt swirling up into the air and he liked the sight of it so much that he kicked twice more. Then, he shoved his hands down into his pockets to keep them from freezing and headed down the path, back towards the fortress and his warm bed within it.
As he walked, he kept an eye out for anything interesting that he may have missed the first time through, but there was nothing. He wondered if he needed to find a new place to scavenge and where that new place might be because everywhere else was crawling with adults and once he'd tried looking for treasures by the tavern but Percy's dad had found him and told him that he should be in bed and then Percy's dad had tripped and an entire tree had landed on top of him and Kana was so freaked out that he just stood around staring at the man and wondering if Percy could still be born in his time if his dad died but then Ignatius' dad had come out and then went to get help so Kana ran away and felt so bad about it that he cried a bunch and Siegbert slept through his crying but Shiro woke up and he told Kana bad jokes until he calmed down and then promised not to tell Siegbert.
Kana was halfway back to his room when he heard crying. At first, he wasn't sure that he'd heard it at all because it was so quiet and really more sniffles than crying, but he stopped to listen and then he was sure that someone was crying. He followed the sound because it was so cold and he was worried that they might be hurt and he was a little scared because it was so late and his mama had warned him that some people would try to take advantage of his kindness to hurt him, but bad people didn't cry. At least, he didn't think they did.
It was only a short walk to find the crying person. They sat around the corner of the fortress, halfway between shadow and starlight. They were so far away from the main path that Kana figured they must have chosen their crying spot because they didn't want to be found. But he'd heard them and he'd found them and, as he got closer, he recognized them.
"Soleil?" Kana whispered. The sniffling stopped. Soleil wiped at her face with the back of her arm. She glared at him, but, even in the dark, her face was puffy and sad and he wasn't scared by her at all.
"Why're you crying Soleil? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she said but she didn't sound fine at all. She sounded like his mama did when she fought with his papa and didn't know he was waiting outside the door and he always felt so bad because he couldn't do anything to make her feel better because he didn't know what they were fighting about anyway because he couldn't hear what they said, he could only hear them yelling.
Kana made room for himself in the dirt beside Soleil. She didn't say anything until he was seated and comfortable. Up close, Kana could see her face was shiny from tears and from raw skin.
He'd never seen Soleil cry before. Usually, it was Shigure that cried because he cried when he got really mad and Soleil was really good at making Shigure mad, but Soleil had never cried before. He always thought of her as the toughest person he knew so he'd never even thought that she could cry before.
"You shouldn't be out so late," she said.
"I know."
Soleil laughed a little, but it didn't sound like her normal laugh because it was wet from her crying. She wiped at her face again. Kana could tell she wasn't happy that she'd been caught crying. She shifted so that her knees were up against her chest and then she crossed her arms over her knees and put her head on top of them.
"Did somebody say something mean?' Kana asked. "Because one time Nina told me I was only born because I was an accident and I cried a bunch because I didn't want to be an accident and then I thought that my mama and papa didn't want me and then Nina made fun of me for crying but it only made me cry more."
Soleil huffed. Her breath was an icy cloud. Kana frowned. He didn't think his story helped much because Soleil didn't say anything. He thought maybe he should leave because maybe she just wanted to be alone and he was making it worse, but then she asked, "Do you know anything about my mother?"
Kana looked at her, but she had her face buried in her arms and so he could only really see the side of her face. He looked at that sad, little sliver of her face and knew that whatever had made her cry was much worse than somebody saying one mean thing to her.
"Siegbert said the other day that your mama left when you and Shigure were babies but that's all I know."
Soleil laughed, but Kana liked it even less than her wet laugh from before. This laugh was cold and bitter.
"Yeah, she abandoned us. Just up and disappeared. My dad, he wasted years looking. I think he's still hopeful she'll just show up one day but…"
Kana fished the dragonstone out from the folds of his coat. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. It helped him focus when his thoughts were threatening to go off on a tangent of epic proportions. Except Soleil didn't say anything else and Kana felt kind of silly playing with his dragonstone so he let it fall back against his chest and tried to think of something to say.
"I like your papa," Kana said. "He's really nice."
Soleil sighed.
"Yeah, he is."
Kana scowled as she fell back into silence and then he was going to say something about the time her papa had taught him how to waltz and how much he had enjoyed that but then she suddenly shouted, "And that's why it makes it all the more fucked up that Shigure doesn't even care how much that harpy—"
Kana shivered when she said harpy because he'd read a book with harpies in it once and the illustrations of the harpies had given him nightmares for weeks. And he knew Soleil was talking about her mama and not an actual harpy, but that only made it a little worse because his mind started making his memory of her pretty mama all shriveled and mean looking.
"She hurt our dad. He just wants to play family and pretend like everything's fine and she's not going to leave us in every single fucking timeline because she's…"
Soleil lost her steam. She sighed in one big gush and then she muttered, "heartless."
But Kana was confused. They weren't supposed to be talking to their parents. Siegbert had said so and they had all gone out of their way to avoid their parents. The only reason Kana was allowed to talk to Corrin was because she came up to talk to him. He got in trouble when Siegbert found out he went out of his way to talk to her. Though, that wasn't a problem anymore because Corrin always left before he could find her and talk to her and he was more than a little worried that she didn't like him anymore because he'd accidentally hurt her when he'd been a dragon.
"I thought I knew Shigure better than anyone, but I never thought he'd do something like this."
Kana frowned. He was almost scared to ask what she was talking about, but he did.
"What did Shigure do?"
For the first time, Soleil raised her head and then she looked at Kana straight on. Her eyes were small and red. Her cheeks were shiny. Her hair was messy and knotted.
"He's been talking to her. Our mother. Taking little singing lessons in his spare time."
"Oh," Kana said and he felt very small and unable to help her. He wondered if he should rat to Siegbert that Shigure was talking to his mama, but he didn't think involving Siegbert would make anything better.
But he knew things could only get worse from here. He knew Soleil and Shigure would be fighting more, if they talked at all. He knew their group would split in two and he knew that lunches and dinners wouldn't be the same. He knew Siegbert would want to stay with Soleil, but he would go with Shigure because Soleil was tough and Shigure was sensitive. He knew Shiro would go with Soleil because he got along with Soleil better than he did with anyone else, except maybe him. And he knew that he'd be stuck somewhere in the middle. Like he always was because he didn't really fit in anywhere.
But that didn't matter right now because Soleil was sad and Kana was the only one there and he thought maybe she would let him help her feel better.
"Do you know what I do when I'm sad?" Kana asked, quietly because he was scared if his voice was too loud then she might slip back into her arms and hide her face again.
"What do you do, Kana?" she asked and he could tell she was just entertaining him, but he took it as a good sign because at least she was talking to him.
"I like to think about all my favorite things and then I like to think of where I got them from and I forget why I'm sad after awhile because I just remember good things instead of bad things."
Soleil didn't say anything. She stared at the brick wall in front of them, but she kept her head up.
"So, like, I have this stuffed rabbit and it's blue and it's missing an ear because I accidentally tore it off but Felicia fixed it for me and it's really soft and I named her Gwen because she has a little Gwen face and I used to sleep with her every night, but I didn't bring her with me here because I didn't really bring anything with me here and you know where I got her from?"
Soleil still didn't look at him, but he could see she was smiling just a little bit but she didn't answer him so he said, "You gave her to me. Do you remember? We were out in the courtyard and I was really sad because Shi—"
Kana swerved from his current line of thought because he didn't think mentioning Shigure would make her feel better so he amended, "Because there was a family of bunnies and everybody was petting them but they kept running away when I tried to pet them and I cried a bunch and then later that night you gave me Gwen because you said you wanted me to have a bunny that wouldn't run away."
"I remember that," Soleil said.
"You're a really good person and I'm really sorry that Shigure is being such a jerk."
He didn't really know if he thought that Shigure was being a jerk because if he didn't know his mama then he would definitely want to meet her, but he also knew that he was lucky because his mama had loved him his whole life, but he figured that him calling Shigure a jerk would maybe make Soleil feel better.
"Thanks Kana," Soleil said. "And I'm really sorry too, but not as sorry as Shigure's gonna be."
Kana blinked because Soleil didn't look sad anymore. She looked tough again, but not in a good way. She looked a little bit like the bullies that used to call him a spoiled crybaby.
He wanted to ask what she meant, but he really didn't want to know because he didn't think it was good and it would probably only make him more worried and he hoped that she would work through her emotions without being mean to Shigure or doing something that would stress out Siegbert, but Kana looked at the glint in her eye and knew that something much worse was going to happen to their group than sitting on opposite sides of the mess hall and he could only hope that it wouldn't be as bad as he thought.
A/N: I don't have much to say for this chapter other than its probably one of my favorites as a whole, cohesive chapter but its got all my favorite things to write in it, but I digress.