theme song for this fic - Chase and Status ft Plan B, End Credits

For most of her short life, Alear had been fighting a losing battle.

A uncontrollable fate.

A route that visibly ended at her gravestone.

However many ways somebody else could describe it – she was the one who felt it. The one who had to live with it.

She never needed to identify a specific point in time that made it clear hers was not a fortunate life. In her mind, it was more of a blur, a whirlpool of moments that would end at a point only she would likely be around to witness. Occasionally, she'd float close enough to another drifting sibling as they descended, and they'd have their interactions, for good or for worse. Together, they'd briefly take a glance up at the light far above and wish meaningless words. Then they'd part.

– "Fuck you." You were three years old, but you growled it, as the nameless enemy leaned on the spear that stuck through your shoulder into the ground, thinking he was victorious over a twelve-year-old looking child, maybe thinking he could take your young Fell head for a pretty profit wherever he called home, unawares of the others in the bushes –

– he alone couldn't duel all of you –

– like the children you could have been, you were all bouncing the spear like a see-saw balancing upon the cliff's edge, and then he wailed a stranger's name in hopelessness as you and your siblings all took your hands off your side of the spear he was hanging onto, dropping him to the rocks far below –

It was now at the finale she'd always known of.

I'm so sorry, Mother.

Fitting, really. A fitting end for a foul dragon like her, who had terrorised the entire world at the whims of a man who rarely had even looked in her direction. To have left the embrace of Lumera the Divine Dragon, an eager and desiring protector and parent, merely to give away her own life enacting vengeance – that was truly the behaviour of Alear, a spawn of evil. Self-serving and ignorantly solitary until death.

I tried. Really. You showed me so much... but I think I was not capable. Not worthy.

– You were eight, and Lumera had touched you for the first time. She had put her holy hand on your shoulder, and that moment burnt you so badly that you spent three weeks alone burying yourself in snow and ice in the mountains, concealing your shame from her –

Just before her nineteenth meeting with Mother, her last blood-brother, Norla, had died somewhere in the West and given away the Emblem of Awakening... a fortunate end for him, shattered and selfish as he was. She'd next seen Emblem Lucina amongst the swelling army of Firenesians, alight with that cobalt tint of goodness. Lumera had personally shown Alear that there was yet a significant chance they would prevail – at a safe distance from the mass of Fell-averse humans, of course.

It was left unsaid, of course, that Alear personally had given them many reasons to be so.

– You were five, and you and your ilk surrounded the merchants on the road, and all of you were so starved and delirious that none could fully hold their human illusions together –

– actual human children screamed inside the wagons, as the things outside with the distorted teeth and claws descended, shattering wood and glass, weapons and armour, pulling their victims out –

– you knew it had not been personal, but you cried anyway, wasting energy on useless emotions as you ate –

Alear would miss Lucina.

She had held and met most of the rings just once, but Lucina, she had realised she liked. Lucina gave her something even Marth could not. Even when reddened and fouled by Alear's nature, Lucina had the same eyes as Lumera, the same confidence, the same assurance. It had been helpful to confide in her silent presence and seek penance in this waning end, separated from Mother for so long.

– You were six, and wished you could confide in him, too. Marth was all you had, and he could even talk back to you... but he saw. He saw everything. And he'd forgive you for it anyway, and then you'd dare to think you were forgivable. –

Alear was likely the last child of Sombron remaining on the field. Certainly the most experienced, manipulative and lethal, and by far the most detached. And she proved it, too, coming back here.

Attacking the Elyosians. Killing them. She'd been efficient at that for a long time, but to do it now? And in such a tactful manner that she never turned the tide for her Father – more lives put out for an empty deception?

Would this help you despise me, Mother? Help you to forget me? Forget that you loved me?

She suffered through the punishments of Sombron for every lost skirmish and foothold, but was no longer permitted to die, and a small whisper in her mind had thundered on and on about the reasons why. Could Father have already uncovered her true intentions? Did he have a plan for her death? Alear had thought she had a sure-fire plan for his too, until the loneliness resettled upon her. Had it been two months since she'd seen Mother? Or three? Even four? The paranoia and dread of returning to his side had been torturous, but necessary. The sorrow and disappointment, the angst and self-hatred. A necessary punishment for a Fell such as Alear.

Is that why I dithered and dallied, rushing out on his orders? Acting the part? Self-flagellation? Why have I still not killed him?

She'd not even bothered to consider what it would mean for... what if she failed? Let him live?

Was she even held back by anything but her own hesitance? Was she really so frightened of being loved?

– You were seven, and you watched with the others as your not-dead sister emerged from the darkness of the night, beaten and chained, reeled out slowly by the rope round her neck, a trap to disrupt the Fell children's overnight camp –

– "He's got an Emblem..." she whispered to all of you –

– you would never forget the terror and relief in her eyes as both sides opened fire through the trees, as she was obliterated by the crossfire of projectiles and magic, and as you ran from the Emblem wielder's massacre you hated her for how lucky she was –

In these last days, she'd so nearly convinced herself that this predicament would work out in her favour, as vague as that notion had been at the time she left.

The good always won, right? Surely.

– How would it feel to act in her name? Would it change the world? Could... could it change you? –

"You and I shall meet her here. When I say so, you will engage."

I was so sure I was right to leave your side, Mother. But now I fear what you will do to save me.

"Yes, Father. What then, Father?"

If he noticed the rippling of disgust in her last words, he didn't even care to accuse any more.

"She will come to us, to bargain for your pitiful life. And we will kill her together."

She was tired.

Marth was tired; he'd never admit it though, and certainly never show it physically as an Emblem – Alear could sense it. Having worn his ring for so much of her dragonhood had ingrained something within her mind, as if he were an extra sense she had acquired, and she had realised some time ago that he was likely affected by Lumera's purity and sheer magical presence. The conflict between the auras during their meetings was surely taxing him, and he'd seemed less stable as of late. But Alear had never found the right words to ask what she could do for him.

I wanted to. I wanted so badly to repay him for his service. To be friends.

Friends. That word Lumera had taught her. Belatedly, she had also applied it in her mind to Veyle; giving a gift like that should have been enough to convince the younger dragon, though.

One day we could be more. We could be sisters. If I still live.

The Fell King had nothing left to use but Alear. No more shields, no children to throw to the fire, and so he made the only move left.

"Their forces are numerous, but they can be broken through their pathetic dependency on her power." Sombron rumbled, and grimaced, and Alear almost allowed herself a surge of pride at the sight of his arm, twisted and charred black by divinity as they stood ready in the grand hall of this wretched keep.

Yesterday, her deception had been exposed.

He knew now of their bond. After an hour of torturous retribution, Sombron had to allow Alear respite… but only for an even more malicious practicality. And oh, she'd been so blind to the possibility of it, as if she had never considered the death of the Divine Dragon was achievable when she and Lumera were still together, fighting under the same banner as fellow Dragons. Never pondered what might result if they were to come to blows.

– Yesterday, you retreated from the battle line and gave away home ground, your force of Corrupted decimated, and Father backhanded you so hard, you woke up six seconds later –

– you heard her before you saw her, a tempest of sound that preceded her draconic form in the skies, diving straight at you and him –

– she'd seen it, you fool –

Lumera still had some reason to save Alear, it seemed. She was risking everything for one unworthy life.

– "You?"

– The rawness of your betrayal broke his voice, just as it broke upon your facade; just as you broke his body. Your disguise undone, flicking his blood off your knife, the Emblem now safe in your stained hands, you turned away as one of your more spiteful brethren thought to apply a Fell's curse of lineage on the dying Firenesian prince –

– it was these acts, such feats of slaughter and deception, that earned you your reputation. You were death. You were Fell. They even knew your personal name, a testament to your power and your survival. Your rise to the top. –

Only Mother could still think to fight for me. She truly is the strongest of us.

The Divine Dragon's own fire was consuming the walls of Sombron's fortress, and the might of the Emblems waited beyond in the forces of the four countries, ready to charge through the burning rubble and take his head. Or so she imagined them, hope in their eyes and thinking they had an opportunity to kill the Fell Dragon, and she honestly wished they had – but she knew Mother now, and knew she would never allow them to commit such an act. She was far too kind to allow it.

Lumera wouldn't even let them take hers. Lumera wouldn't let Alear end like that. But Alear didn't know how to summon that conviction anymore.

"Be ready. You shall approach her first."

Sombron naturally considered her to be the wall Lumera would not destroy. A one-way method of attack.

Ironic, really, that he acknowledged a bond for this purpose, but fatally did not regard the bond itself.

Of course – in the end, to him, she was still nothing but a pawn. Alear, the strongest defect. As ever, a tool to be used, to snuff out that which was precious and illum- il- lume...

Stupid. Defect. Defect, defect. DEFECT. Of course he would find out.

– "Don't say that! There's nothing defective about you!" –

No. No, no, no, she mustn't come.

She can't die here.

No, no, not for me.

Not after all the loss – cold blood and stone and the echoes of her siblings' screams as the Corrupted savaged them, tearing and shredding with their hands and teeth and blades. All of the broken dreams upon the battlefields where she cut down humans and dragons, dying innocents who grasped for their emblems, or at their friends, forever denied their victory by the Fell beast with those bloodied eyes.

Alear made a choice.

"Marth."

Her enemy was nine paces away, his stance facing to the right, exposing his crippled arm.

"What idiocy is thi-"

A lash of red struck out from her side, and he responded with a explosion of pressure, trying to force the sword's point away through instinct – surprised, perhaps, by said idiocy, forgetting that an Emblem was not so easily denied. Sent tumbling through the roaring of her father as he was hammered by the Emblem of Beginnings' blade, Alear thought she saw a shimmering of cyan in his form as Marth looked to her, a colour she had learned to love like a whole world, one that she clung to so desperately but still could not fathom the depths of –

Don't forget. You can be different.

– and he vanished.

You're right. I could have been.

Alear was losing control of his ring; these feelings that were growing within made it so much harder to keep him summoned and steady, in the way she had always known to do until now... but she had realised this. Marth wasn't the only one here struggling with inner turmoil.

She unfurled her hands, took a breath, and pushed herself upwards; straightened her arms so hard that she caved in the tiling beneath her, palms grinding up dirt.

Lumera. Mother. You cannot come. I will end this myself.

Father was strong, but only in Fell magic and his projections of fear, of imperviousness.

Father was naturally commanding, but only when he had a force to command, when he had the means to effect them.

When not in his Fell form? When removed from his precious rings, when his paradise of Corruption and subjugated children was emptied out and burning down around them?

When he stood with the second-to-last of his able servants, the one who had survived all the destruction and disposal of his empire, from both outside and within; the one who had been burnt so thoroughly that her mind had turned to ice?

The one who had finally uncovered her heart with the help of a dragon who's love she knew she would never be worthy of, and then given it to someone else; to someone young and unfrozen, who would cherish the connection of family in a way Alear had long discarded?

With one who was so enraged, her fangs pierced her own tongue and she laughed through the blood?

Black fire swallowed her, a tidal force that overtook the room and made nothing of everything within –

– and she cut through it, prowling towards him, her sword alight with conflicting colour.

He was nothing.

– You forgot your age when she looked you in the eyes. "When this war is over, you'll join me in the light. I promise you this, my child." –

– you smiled, and said nothing –

– but you found time to think –

A second chance. A restart.

She smiled as she sliced into him.

It was such a selfish thought, after all she'd done. But Alear just couldn't fully deny it.

That would be nice.

A/N

inspired by some Past Alear fics on ao3.

she was hella distant and traumatised in canon too so i went ham filling in some blanks

hope you enjoyed this disaster