Cordelia walked briskly through the camp. The fact that her son had been absent from mess for nearly 20 minutes was beginning to worry her. None of his siblings known the cause of his unusual behavior, though Severa had said that it was probably one of Jack's "projects", whatever that meant, and had been vague after that. Despite the disturbing fact that Jack's siblings knew so little about him, Cordelia was beginning to seriously worry about her oldest son. She rounded a tent to see Jack warming several pieces of what looked like really old venison jerky in a frying pan over one of the campfires.
"Jack!" she called "What are you eating? Why aren't you at dinner?"
"Oh, hey mom!" replied Jack casually, "I'm just finishing off the rations I brought with me. There's a little bit left, and I want to eat it before it goes bad. Wanna help me?"
Cordelia eyed the pieces of jerky critically. "Jack…these have already gone bad…" she announced.
"Err….this isn't bad, mom." protested Jack.
"They look stale and old. How long have you been carrying this around with you?"
"Umm, a little over four and a half months." said Jack as Cordelia's eyes widened, "It's a shame I can't get it to last longer. I could feed myself for longer with a single deer on quarter rations if I could just get it to last more than five months! Hopefully, I can find some better meat preservation techniques."
Cordelia gave her son a strange look. "Five months is really pushing it, especially in that backpack of yours," kicking Jack's backpack, "By the way, what, do you have in that thing anyway?"
Jack propped up the backpack he'd been reclining against and began rummaging around in it.
"Let's see…got three spare swords, two spare axes, and eight…..no nine new spearheads. Oh, and there's that bag of backup arrowheads"
Jack rummaged around some more as Cordelia stared dubiously at the weapons, which were all of particularly low quality.
"Here's those four deer hides I've been hanging on to, some spare bowstrings, my bear traps, two dozen vulneraries, my sewing kit and extra cloth….oh! There's that wolf pelt I thought I lost! Sweet! Uh… what else do I have…. There's my cooking stuff….Oh, plus my weapons – the ones I fight with."
"How much does that all weigh?" asked Cordelia curiously, surprised that anyone could carry that much around and fight at the same time.
"Uh…..not sure. Never had time to weigh it, and the weight fluctuates off of what I have in it."
Her eyes narrowed as Jack began to poke at the first piece of warmed jerky with a fork that might have been considered barely passable by post-apocalyptic wasteland standards. With the swiftness of a pouncing cat, she knocked the fork from his hand, and grabbed the frying pan with her other hand, wresting it from her son's grasp, and hastily brushed the rest of the jerky into the fire.
"Hey!" exclaimed Jack, "What're you doing! You're literally taking food from my mouth!"
"You're not eating that garbage while I'm here. There's real food in the mess hall, and you're going to eat it!"
"Oh, come on!" protested Jack as he attempted to intercept his mother's lunge for his backpack, and the last pound of his jerky stash, "I could feed the entire army for a week with stuff like this! Imagine how much money we can save!"
"We fight for a ROYAL ARMY! While you and your siblings and friends are extra mouths to feed, we can manage! You don't have to go to such extremes! We aren't destitute, like…." She trailed off, as she let go of her grip on Jack's backpack.
"Me and Severa before we travelled back to the past." Finished Jack with a grimace as he took the opportunity to drag his backpack towards himself.
"I didn't mean it that way…" hastily explained Cordelia.
"It's ok," muttered Jack, "You don't have to apologize. Elena never does, and she's practically your carbon copy."
"If Elena was my carbon copy, she'd apologize," muttered Cordelia wryly. She was not looking forward to the talk she'd eventually need to have with Jack's twin sister.
The two sat in awkward silence for a moment. Suddenly, an idea came to Cordelia. She stood up and said "Ok, mister. We're going to take this to the mess hall and ask everybody what they think of your jerky."
Jack scrambled to his feet and pulled out his last pound of jerky.
"If you insist!"
Lissa and Maribelle had beheld the "food" in horror, asking why anyone would eat it. Chrom, Robin, Lon'qu, Panne, and Sar'yi had promptly and unanimously declared it unfit for consumption and Robin had even asked why it wasn't in the garbage already. Gregor had fondly reminisced about how he and a group of his fellow mercenaries got food poisoning from eating jerky that had looked kind of like that before having to fight through a horde of bandits. Vaike glared suspiciously at it, stating that even on the street, he could get fresher food than that. Sully said that it looked like something she'd cooked, as Stahl nodded in agreement. Miriel, the current quartermaster, had immediately rearranged her schedule to open a slot on tomorrow's itinerary to inspect the rest of the contents of Jack's backpack.
Jack sighed and sagged down next to the campfire.
"I knew it! You guys have been listening to Elena! Of course, Lucina found her before Severa and I." he grumbled.
"See, I told you those rations weren't good." Said his mother exasperatedly. Seeing her chance, she said "What's wrong with your sister anyway? You blame her for everything!"
"I don't know, maybe because she's the cause of all my problems? She's always prattling on about how she's a real knight, and I'm just an over glorified mercenary, she's the greatest hero to ever live, and I'm the scum of the earth. She's always going on about how I'm a waste, and how it's a miracle I haven't gotten myself killed yet!"
"Does she have a point?" asked Cordelia, trying to get a feel for the situation
"No." muttered Jack with a roll of his eyes, "After you and Dad were killed, it was just me, Lucina, Gerome and Elena who could fight – everyone else was way too young at the time. Lucina and I ran a lot of raids on the Valmese and Plegian supply convoys – I started as a cavalier, just like her, but when my horse was killed, I reclassed to a myrmidon. That's when it started. She gave her horse to Edgar to start training him and then became a Pegasus Knight with a stray Pegasus we found. She kept telling me how I was weak because I wasn't able to protect my mount, like you and Dad taught us, and how I wasn't doing things like you and dad, and "why did you change, Jack?"
"Did you change?"
"Of course, I did! My horse was killed in an ambush! I don't know what else I was supposed to do about it! I was lucky the arrow didn't hit me! I changed to adapt to the fact that I didn't have a horse! Anyway, after some time, Lucina had me reclass to a mercenary to help her hold the front lines better and not put the younger ones in so much danger. With Gerome and Elena mounted, me and Lucina were the only ones on the front lines on the ground. I never liked being up in the front lines though."
"Why's that?" asked Cordelia.
"It…it was too much like you and Dad."
"Is that a problem? Did we do something wrong?"
"You ran straight into battle. Like, out in the open. No cover, no tactics, no nothing. It got both of you killed. Why would I make the same mistake?"
"That's how war is fought – you can't always be sneaking around in the back, setting bear traps, Jack."
Jack reddened at the mention of his favorite, and most frequently mocked method of picking off enemy soldiers. Composing himself, he said,
"We needed someone to do ground reconnaissance, flank the enemy, and sabotage enemy emplacements in their backlines– Lucina had me leading a lot of covert operations with Severa, Inigo, Owain and Morgan. No conventional knight would be fit for the job, which is why being a mercenary as opposed to a mounted knight like a cavalier is better."
"Lucina favored guerilla warfare?"
"No, not when she had a solid infantry core and a half decent cavalry unit. We're the reconnaissance unit, remember? We were just scouts and distractions – someone to attack the flank in a head on battle or to cause chaos before a fight. Or just cause damage behind enemy lines. Like the time we set three of Walhart's supply fleets on fire in a row the night after they touched shore in Ylisse. Or the time we set Validar's camp's stables on fire, and then used the distraction to raid his command tent. He was pretty angry about that one!" Jack laughed, recalling fond memories of him and his crew hastily cramming everything nice they could get their hands on into his backpack whilst tossing very stale bread and ratty spare supplies all over Validar's regal and fancy command tent.
"Why were you so aggressive? Were you really that desperate?"
"Yeah…..Walhart was a madman trying to conquer the world and Validar was a madman set on vengeance, and both wanted control of the same land. We were just the ones caught in the middle of it all. I mean seariously, why am I responsible for something my grandfather did? I wasn't even born yet! But considering the size of our group, we gave them their money's worth of a fight. My squad was notorious for hitting enemy supply lines and reinforcements. Actually, the plan to sabotage their supply lines was Laurent's idea, tactician and all, but we were the ones who carried it out. He really is Grandmaster Robin's son."
Cordelia smiled. The bookwormish son of Robin had undoubtedly inherited his father's tactical mind, and his mother's meticulous attention to detail. Father and son would discuss strategy for hours on end if not interrupted.
"Anyway, the reason Elena hates me is because she's so stuck on being just like you and dad. I changed to face the challenges at hand, but she didn't – she actually went out of her way to be just like you guys. She went back to what didn't work and seems to think it's an affront to all that is sacred that I've adapted to our changing surroundings. I've brought value and something that we didn't have before, and I've gotten results! Have I ever told you how we trapped an enemy army of reinforcements in a gorge for three weeks? Or the time I blocked three separate mountain passes simultaneously with a grand total of five people, including myself? Elena hasn't done any of that! She's just doing the same thing that didn't work before!"
"But what she is doing has worked, right? She's here and alive, isn't she?"
"She has Gerome. He's always there to bail her out when she goes in too deep. That and he is also a very strong fighter as well, and two powerful fighters instead of just one helps out her cavalry unit a lot. I also think he likes her." Jack said conspiratorially. "It would explain too much! He takes her side of the argument all the time, and he claims her food is good, even though she's really bad! And I think she likes him too, but I'm not entirely certain. I've been waiting to call her "Dutchess", but I haven't had the opportunity to do so yet! Wait, that is Gerome's dad's title, right? Duke of somewhere that got conquered by Valm?"
Cordelia burst out laughing hysterically. "Oh, I'm going to have to tell Cherche this!" she managed to wheeze, "This is too good!"
Jack grinned, "Just let me be there when you tell her. This is gonna be too good to miss. I'll bring Severa too, she might just actually smile!"
Cordelia composed herself and sighed. "I'm really going to have to work hard to get you all to get along again. You know, after we picked you up yesterday, Lucina came up to me. She asked me to try and get you two to stop fighting."
Jack looked surprised. "Lucina asked you that?"
Cordelia nodded. "I know that this is probably not going to be easy for you, but can you give her a second chance? Elena is your twin sister after all, and I'm sure Edgar looks up to you, at least a little bit."
Jack scowled. "She's already burned her second chance, and her third and her fourth, and all of the ones after that. And, no matter what I say, Edgar's just going to listen to her."
"Just like Severa will only listen to you."
"Yeah, for good reason too! Elena's just going to scold her for not becoming a Pegasus knight, and tell her that she is a failure, and ask why she can't be like Edgar. Who, if you haven't noticed, is just like Dad! When he gets promoted, he's going to become a great knight too! There's no point! I'm the only one who actually cares about her! She's gone and taken her own path, and Elena's just trying to shoot her down!"
"Is that so?"
"Duh! At least I got Severa to her way to her full potential. She's made so much progress. I'm really proud of her and what she's been able to do!"
"And what about Edgar?"
"I….I just didn't get to Edgar in time. I was always out on raids, and most of my spare time was spent teaching Severa and trying to help her catch up. I tried to make more time for Edgar, but I was too late… Elena got to him first. And now he's Lady I'm So Perfect's lap dog. And if that's what he wants now? Well, there's no point in me trying." Jack finished bitterly.
"You're making excuses." Stated Cordelia flatly. "I saw you yesterday. You held a castle against 100 to 1 odds that anyone else would call impossible. Even Robin and Laurent were nervous about engaging! We might not even have attacked that hoard of enemies to rescue you if Lucina wasn't so insistent! Why did you give up?"
"Elena. She already convinced him of her way and that nothing else is good enough. There was no point. She filled his head with all sorts of nonsense, of how he had to hold up your legacy or something, by going and doing exactly what got you and Dad killed. I, on the other hand, chose to preserve the legacy – to protect the royalty of Ylisse with tactics that actually work. It's not all glorious charges and last stands. Sometimes, you have to get your hands dirty and get stuff done!"
Cordelia sighed. "Is it too much for a mother to ask for her children to get along?
Jack rolled his eyes. "In this family, yes. You have Elena to thank for that. She's just not reasonable."
"No, it's you too, mister. Have you ever tried to get along with her?"
"Yeah! And she just keeps on being stubborn!"
Cordelia deflated internally. This was going to be a lot harder than she thought, and she also had a sinking suspicion that Jack hadn't been the most reasonable either.
"Well, I'm going to talk with your sister. I'm going to hear her side, and then I will decide what to do. I expect you to meet me at the well at 9:00 sharp tomorrow to hear my decision."
Jack shrugged. "Go ahead! You'll see."
"Oh, I will."
There was a tense silence.
"Honey, whatever I decide, know that I will always love you." Said Cordelia. "No matter who is in the right or wrong. No matter what happens to you, or what you've gone through. You will always be my son. Just like Elena will always be my daughter, and Edgar will always be my son, and Severa will always be my daughter."
"Even if Severa ends up dating Inigo?"
"I heard that!" came an indignant bellow from across the campground, as the mercenary in question came strolling into view.
"Oh dear. They've sent someone to come looking for us." Said Cordelia stood up. "Why don't you go eat some real food? I need to talk to your sister."
Jack sighed and pulled himself to his feet. "Ok. Just don't get your hopes up."
Cordelia smiled. "I'm sure she cares for you deep down."
"Yeah", grumbled Jack sarcastically, "Really deep and really far down. She's got a funny way of showing it."
Cordelia sighed. This was going to be much more difficult than she had thought. But all four of her children had come from the future and were all warriors to be proud of, despite their varied personalities, despite their apocalyptic future, despite their awful relationships with each other. And if that could happen, she could put her fractured family back together, piece by piece. Now, to find Elena….