Even when your loved ones were trying to hold on to the barely tangible parts of you and begged for you to stay, you smiled in your death.
At least, you thought you were dying until you woke up.
And you wake up as a blank slate.
"… Where…?"
Your head hurts. Did you run into something and knock yourself out? That'd be pretty embarrassing. You push yourself up on wobbly feet. Oh man, even your whole body kind of feels… new? You don't know how to describe it. At least it isn't unpleasant. You try walking around, but you find that your feet don't exactly make contact with the hold your fingers out in front of you and you're startled to find that you can see through them, as if they're made of glass.
You look up from your strange fingers and see a tall mirror covered in a cloth staring back at you.
Suddenly those curious feelings are gone and a sense of dread crawls up your spine and churns your stomach.
You are afraid.
Of what?
Of facing yourself. Of what you've done in your life so far. Of a lot of things, really.
Well… have you seen yourself in the mirror lately? Go on.
Take a look.
With uncertain fingers and trembling hands, you gingerly peel the cover off the mirror.
You study your reflection.
But it takes all of your willpower not to break down and cry because the person in the mirror is you from before you lost your memories, before you met Chrom. The person in the mirror stares back at you with your own weary eyes, your misery cloaked in your lost mother's love, your darkness festering inside your heart. (You refuse to call it Grima's; it never belonged to that lizard in the first place.) Your bones start to remember the bitter cold in which you lost your mother. Your shoulders remember the weight of the world you used to carry around because the constant brand called you a monster. Your hands tremble with the memory of blood and skin from trying to scratch it off. You remember it. You remember it all.
"Ignorant. Naive. Weak." Your reflection hissed.
You're crumbling inside. You remember that you were so unprepared, so callow in the face of the world outside your small home. No idea who you were, no idea how to fight, no idea how to kill. When those bandits attacked Southtown and you joined in the battle, you saw things that plagued you in your dreams for years. Death, despair, destruction. Orphaned children crying for their dead parents. Broken families mourning their dead, littered in the streets. Sisters, brothers, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, gone. And you couldn't even process how to hold a sword let alone protect the unarmed.
But you block out the words with hands over your ears.
You've learned. You've experienced hardship and struggle and love and camaraderie. You've fought, hard and true, and you lived just as much. You grew.
"But you've felt it too, right?"
Your heart stops.
"You wanted to kill them all for killing Mother, turning you into a puppet, using you for their own goals. They took everything from you. Isn't that right?"
You uncover your ears and look.
Your reflection stares back at you, angry and bitter and hurt.
The Grimleal might've taken a lot of things from you… but not everything. They took away your Mother's life, but they never took her legacy. They took away your freedom, but you took it back. They tried to take your fate into their hands, but you made it yours long before they found you.
"… I took more things from them than they did from me," you say with a fake smug smirk. "I even killed my own father."
Your reflection suddenly morphs into a different you. This time you stare at an unholy hybrid of dragon and human. Instead of two eyes, you have six. Instead of skin, you have scales. Instead of fingers and teeth, you have claws and fangs. Instead of a living body, you've turned into a lifeless husk.
"Is that so?" A discordant, raspy voice overlapped with your own―Grima's, you realize―replies with a hint of amusement. "You took more than your father's life. You took others' as well. You took soldiers from their families. Brothers- and sisters-in-arms. Siblings from each other.
"You took Emmeryn from Chrom and Lissa."
An intense wave of nausea overcomes you and your knees feel weak. War, you realized soon after that first battle, never ended without casualties and gods were there many. You took down tyrants and conquerors, but none of those held a candle to how many soldiers you killed. How many families did you break with your blade? You couldn't even begin to fathom the number of lives you took. You can't even remember their faces―perhaps that's best for your sanity. And Emmeryn. If only you'd been stronger, smarter to save her. If only you'd made a different move. If only you'd done something different, she would be alive. Then her death wouldn't still haunt you, even in your death.
"Why… you're the reason why Lucina had to suffer so much."
That makes you stiffen and pause. You had the choice of being a god. You had the capability to turn into the monster in the mirror.
Gods know how many bodies you left behind in the wake of victory. Would that make you a monster?
Perhaps. Even without godhood you had power to destroy, decimate. You had a choice to walk away from this war, but you joined in with Chrom and the Shepherds. For what? Justice? Peace? You bitterly laugh at the notion that you killed people for peace. What a mighty cause to delude yourself of justifying all those deaths. A monster indeed. You're plenty a monster without Grima stepping in, but then you remember that you were offered godhood. Well. That tends to, ah, complicate things. If you were a god, you would…
But when you look at your reflection, you see yourself, terrified and alone, swayed by a temptation of perhaps a cure-all, an escape, something to make you and everyone around you happy and safe. Except, you had made a deal with the devil itself and you paid the price for it. A gruesome price. Six eyes stare back at you, a reminder of what you'd become had you chosen godhood. You shudder.
The one thing that kept you from turning into this monster is that you remembered your adopted family of soldiers. Every single one of them―they all had screamed at you to get your shit together and fight back when Grima held you hostage. You were helplessly drowning under the dragon's influence and, somehow, your bonds with the Shepherds pulled you out, saved you.
Those people―whom you love and cherish and, in turn, love and cherish you just as much―are the reason why you made the choice to kill Grima with your hands, so that they wouldn't have to live to see a painful, dismal future somewhere down the line. After all, you never really trusted the gods that much.
"I am," you say, "in a different timeline, that is. But in this one, I met and fought alongside Lucina to change the course of Fate. I learned that she is a very resilient woman, whose hope never dies even when she has gone through hell and back. And her efforts were not in vain. What she set out to do and fought for… she succeeded with the help of her friends.
"I can…forgive myself for Emmeryn. Sort of. What happened happened and there's no changing the past. I might never be entirely over her, but Chrom and Lissa will―I mean, they have supported me. And I'm forever grateful for that."
Then, your reflection stills. Scales flake off to reveal human skin. Fangs and claws shrink down to normal-sized teeth and human fingers. By the time you see yourself reflected back at you, the mirror starts to fade away like you did. Your reflection grins before it disappears with the mirror.
In its place stands a very tall, very intimidating, very radiant, and very beautiful goddess in a white dress with long flowing jade hair and piercing blue eyes that stare down at you.
You gulp nervously. H-hopefully Naga doesn't smite you or anything, right?
To your surprise, the goddess's lips turn slightly upwards in a tiny but kind smile.
"Do you wish to see your loved ones?"
You pause.
"Is this heading where I think it's heading to?"
Naga laughs.
"Would you like a second chance at life?"
When you wake up, you're met with a pair of curious blue eyes studying you. A blonde girl in pigtails giggles at you, while a familiar blue-haired man offers a gloved hand.
"There are better places to take a nap than on the ground you know."
When you take his hand, you find that the back of your hand is clear, free from the brand.
Two pairs of arms encircle you in a warm embrace. Someone starts to sniffle―it's you. Oh dear, here comes the waterworks.
"Welcome back."
You smile with grateful tears in your eyes.