It's been four weeks! I'm sorry!

Hahaha! It seems that my rambling is contagious! That, or you just want to speak your mind. I always say that I'm going to keep my rambling to a minimum, but I always feel I have to put "this" in or "that" in. I guess it's just me. But if you feel like rambling, go ahead since I like to learn about people. I'm actually more of a listener than a talker, so that's probably why I can remember things my friends say and when I mention it, they look at me as if I were crazy, haha. Just to put this in: if you feel like talking to me –questions, comments, flames, or just general talk- you can e-mail me atsuki(place underscore here)meganeat yahoo or if you want to talk on AIM, my address is eyedonno25. Don't worry, I don't bite. Whether if it's just a hi or if you want to have a conversation, I'll be happy to talk to you. If you don't understand my yahoo e-mail address, just go to my infopage and click on my email. It's there too.

N E ways, on with the story!

Disclaimer: I do not own any Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken characters. They belong to Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.

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Chapter 10: Ready for the Worst

It was a good thing that she hadn't unpacked her bag. All she needed to do was grab it and go. But… maybe she'll stay for a couple of more hours… for Florina. After all, she's leaving her with Lord Hector. "Boy, I hope Lady Lyn understands and doesn't kill me for leaving her here. Those two are getting along nicely though."

"So, uh… Matthew, you're okay with going to Etruia with me?"

"Yeah, of course. Why? Are you not comfortable with it? You think I might do something?" he said with a sly look.

"N-No! I never thought of that! I know that you won't do anything like that! Or… is he? A-Anyways, I thought… that you might not want to leave Ostia right now or something."

"Nah, I'm fine with leaving. In fact, I can't wait. I just want to get away from Ostia for a while again. I know that it has only been a few weeks since we came back, but I miss traveling."

"Alright then. We'll leave tomorrow morning."

"Sounds good. I'll meet up with you at the front of the castle."

"Got it."

Caden closed her door when Matthew walked out.

"Should we ride a horse? Nah… we'll just walk. If I remember, my brother is learning how to ride a horse. He might be really good at it. I'll learn from him. Oh, I should probably tell Florina."

Caden first walked to the stables, she saw Huey, but no Florina. She walked up to the Pegasus.

"Hey Huey. Have you seen Florina?" she said stroking its head.

Huey was moving its nose to the opposite end of the stable to the path to the garden.

"She went that way the last time you saw her?"

Huey nodded its head.

"Alright, Huey. Thank you. Here's something for you."

She reached into her bag and grabbed an apple.

"There you go."

Huey bit into the apple and started eating its little snack. Caden walked into the garden and saw Florina talking to Serra, she's probably asking Serra more advice to be like her. She walked up to the two conversing.

"Oh! Hey there, Caden!" Serra said waving her hand. Florina looked behind her and waved her hand too.

"Hello Serra, Florina. Um… Florina, can I talk to you for a bit?"

"Okay."

Serra waited as Florina walked up to Caden.

"Um… I don't know if you heard about this but um… I'm leaving to go to Etruia tomorrow."

"You are? Who's going with you?"

"Matthew's going with me."

"Why don't I go with you?"

"I figured that you want more time with Lord Hector, right? When you want to go home, there are probably some soldiers who will escort you back to Caelin."

"Okay then. I wish you would have told me earlier though."

"It looked like you were having a good time with Lord Hector. I didn't want to ruin that for you," she said smiling. "You… are talking to him… right?"

Florina sheepishly looked the other way and blushed. "He's still done most of the talking, but I have been talking too."

"That's a nice improvement, Florina. Well then, if I don't see you tomorrow, I just wanted to say 'see you later' today."

"Okay then, see you later."

Florina hugged Caden and Caden walked back to her room. She flopped on her bed and rolled to her side.

It's her and Matthew going to Etruia… together. Of course she liked the idea of spending time with Matthew with no distractions but, … no, she can't think of that now. Matthew's friendly. He's only going along for comic relief, or… maybe their relationship will go from "friends" to "more than friends." She likes him more than just a friend, but she tried not to make that thought cloud her other thoughts along the way. Eh… time to go to sleep. She'll get to think as much as she wants to tomorrow morning… which came by rather quickly.

Caden woke up when the suns' rays shone on her though the windows. She lazily wiped away the drool on her face and wiped it on her pillow She sat up on her bed and stretched. After that, she lied forward on her bed and then lied with her head near the bottom part of the four post bed. "I don't want to get up yet." Without looking, she went to reach for her boots on the side of the bed. She touched the lip of the boot, she tried to grab it, and so she moved closer to the edge of the bed. She grabbed one boot, but the other one was further, so she moved closer to the edge of the bed. When she grabbed her boot, she slid off the bed and fell on the ground. (1)

"… Ouch…" she said with her delayed reactions.

She slowly stood up as she was rubbing her elbow. She looked to the other bed, Florina was still sleeping. She tried not to make a racket, so she put on her boots, grabbed her drawstring bag, and left the bedroom. She flung her drawstring bag over her shoulder and walked to the entrance of the castle. There, Matthew was leaning on one of the pillars.
"Do you ever sleep?"

"I tend to sleep for a couple of hours and stay awake the rest of the day."

"I… should learn that. It seems pretty useful. Can you become wide awake when someone attacks you at night?"

"Yeah. It's like a thief's sense."

"That's interesting. Shall we go now?"

"Yes, let's get going."

They walked for a few miles, and then Caden's feet started hurting a little.

"Do you want to hop on my back so you can rest?"

"I'm fine. We traveled longer than this before, I'm a little used to this pain. I can handle it."

"Alright then."

"… Hey Matthew, what do you think of Florina and Lord Hector being together?"

"Hm… this is something I'm not used to talking about but, I think opposites attract. Florina is very shy and fragile, and then Lord Hector is bold and speaks his mind."

"Yes, I get what you mean."

She wanted to ask him about how he thought of the other couples, but she thought that talking about that was more of a female thing. She tried to change the subject.

"So um… does Guy still owe you favors?"

"How did you know about that?"

"I was talking to Guy one day, and about why he joined our army. He told me how that whole contract came about."

"Well, he has a few favors. I just haven't thought of them yet."

"So, how long is this contract going to last, until he completes all of his favors for you?"

"Yes, that about sums it up."

"I… see… well. It's good that he's not your lap dog doing everything for you. Just… don't ask him to do anything drastic like, take over a castle or jump off a cliff."

"That would be a sight to see," Matthew chuckled.

Caden laughed too. She tried to imagine Guy taking over castle then manically laughing, and then she imagined him jumping off a cliff.

They talked once in a while along the way. When night came, they covered a lot of ground and saw that there was a town nearby. They stayed at the inn in the town. In order to save money, they rented one room with two beds. Caden tried to think that her sleeping in the same room with Matthew not bother her too much. Yes, she knew that nothing was going to happen, but she was kind of nervous sleeping under the same roof. Of course that happened many times while she was in Eliwood's army, but that was different since there were more people. Anyways, all her thinking made her sleepy, and she quickly dozed off.

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It was only a couple of hours when they left the town. Now, bandits attacked them. As Caden and Matthew took out their weapons, the bandits rushed towards them and swung their weapons. Caden and Matthew defended themselves. Surprisingly, when Caden and Matthew won, Matthew was looking at their attackers, he noticed something familiar.

"They're… the same bandits that we fought the day we met you guys," Matthew said.

"Geez, it was only five days ago that we helped the village from these bandits. Now, they're coming after us. This is crap," Caden said taking her sword from the ground.

She looked at the blade when she stood straight again. This was the sword that she had for a couple of weeks. It was getting dull; scratches and scrapes were seen all over the sword's blade with dents and chips. The sword's blade was slightly covered in blood, and the drops were sliding down the dull blade, showing where the scratches were by the liquid filling up the hole. It didn't look like the sword was going to break soon. In fact, she only used it a couple of times. She didn't think it was going to break for a while. She still had a long ways to go until the sword broke.

"Caden," Matthew said.

"Y-Yes?"

"We need to take care of the bodies here. We can't just leave them out like this."

"… Or can we? There are carnivorous birds around; they can take care of it."

"Caden, don't make any excuses if you don't like dead bodies. We need to bury them or else they'll start to rot and it'll make the sky smell horrid. Besides, the landscape doesn't look good with dead bodies everywhere."

"Heh, you're right. But I don't like dead bodies."

"No one does, but we need to bury them. You're really squeamish, Caden. Here, we'll just dig a big hole now and when we're done, I'll move all of the bodies in here."

"O-Okay. I can't help that I'm squeamish!"

"Haha, alright… but I figured that fighting for three years will get you over that, but I guess I was wrong. Now we need to find something we can use as a shovel."

They looked around and they decided to use the enemy's weapon as their's shovels because they couldn't find anything else around them.

It took them a while to bury the holes, but they got it finished hours later. Matthew dragged the bodies into the hole and when he finished that, they filled the hole with the dirt that they dug up. They continued walking until they found a stream nearby so that they can wash the blood off of their weapons and their bodies.

"I have a feeling that this ambush will not be the worst in this travel," Caden said as they wiped their hands.

"Why would you say that?"

"It's… it's just a hunch. Although I hate it, but most of my hunches are right."

"Well then, let's hope for the best that your hunch doesn't come true."

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Author's Note:

Sorry if this chapter seemed a little rushed. I know it does to me.

I'm sorry to say this, people, but I'm keeping this story on hold for now. It might be a couple of months until my next update. I have major writer's block and I've been doing other stuff that's been occupying me from continuing this story. I apologize profusely! I should have finished writing this story before I posted it up. I have the outline down, but I haven't written the details yet. I hope I didn't leave you on a major cliffhanger. This chapter is a beginning of a new arch, so just keep that in mind. So when I get that done, I'll continue.

1) Haha, I'll have to say, I sort of enjoyed writing this paragraph, I don't know why. Probably it's because I think of Caden being sophisticated and proper, but when I wrote it, I made her sound sloppy. I don't know, I like this paragraph.